Investment House The best Announced that it had withdrawn its intention to sell control of the non-bank credit company Peninsula . The announcement is particularly surprising given the short time that has passed since Meitav announced that it is considering a number of offers it has only recently received for the acquisition of its stake in the company.
According to the report to the stock exchange, Meitav notes that “the company has decided not to respond to these inquiries and not to promote a sale transaction. The company sees the non-bank credit field as a significant growth engine, and will continue to work with Peninsula to promote and grow Peninsula.”
It is not inconceivable that Meitav used the previous announcement of the bids it received for its holdings in Peninsula (50.6%) as an “experimental balloon” to create competition, increase price and attract more entities to bid for the shares, which are currently trading at NIS 271 million (derived from a value of about half a billion NIS for the entire peninsula (NIS 535 million).
It should be noted that the Peninsula share is on a sharp downward trend and since the beginning of the year it has lost about 30% of its value. Moreover, since the announcement of Meitav’s intention to sell its share in the company, the Peninsula share has fallen by 10%, so that the value of Meitav’s holdings has shrunk by about NIS 30 million within one month.
The public is less interested in loans
In the background, we will mention that shares of other non-bank credit companies have also suffered a severe blow in recent months, especially in the face of negative sentiment from the capital markets due to rising inflation and rising interest rates, which could put the world and Israel into recession, limiting public lending.
In addition, the local non-banking sector has suffered an image blow in recent weeks due to irregularities discovered in two companies belonging to it – United Credit andBackup Holdings . There is a fear in both companies that loans in the amounts of tens of shekels will not be repaid, the shares of both were suspended from trading on the stock exchange and when they opened for a separate 20-minute trade, they collapsed by more than 50%.
Although both Backing Holdings and Yonet Credit operate in the field of check discounting (hence their irregularities), an area in which some of the non-bank credit card companies traded on the stock exchange refrain from operating, the media, public and financial echoes surrounding the two events may deter investors from making significant purchases. In the industry in the near future.
Therefore the combination of the three streams – the negative sentiment in the markets that has lasted since the beginning of the year, the specific decline in the Peninsula stock that was also unusual compared to the other companies in the field (the Naoi brothers has fallen 17% since the beginning of the year). The industry – may indicate that at best they did not receive attractive offers for it for the controlling shares in Peninsula and therefore decided at this stage not to proceed with the sale transaction.
Meitav owns other companies in the field
For the best, it should be noted, the field of credit does not just focus on holding control of the peninsula. The investment house owns a number of other companies in the field, including the fintech company Liquidity, in which it holds 44.6%, and which specializes in credit and the development of start-ups.
Peninsula was founded in 2004 by Micha Avni, and specializes in providing credit to small and medium-sized businesses in a variety of fields, from food and industry to diamonds and energy. Along with Meitav and Avni, which hold about 8%, the main shareholders in the company are Migdal (9.6%) and Phoenix (6.5%). Avni, by the way, announced his resignation in March, replacing Lior Eyal, who will take over as CEO later this month. In the first quarter of the year, the company’s net profit was NIS 11.4 million (a decrease of 50% compared to the corresponding quarter last year). Credit amounted to NIS 1.36 billion.