Israir (6H, Tel Aviv Ben Gurion) parent company Israir Group, known as BGI Investments until this April, has raised just over ILS25 million shekels (USD7.3 million) in an Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
The group issued 22,523,000 shares at ILS1.11 (USD0.323) each, representing 10.2% of its share capital, it outlined in a series of bourse filings on June 20-22. Trading in the stock opened on June 23, with the stock exchange assigning it the ticker symbol ISRG. The company was valued at the IPO at ILS220 million (USD64 million).
BGI Investments, a vehicle owned by supermarket supremo Rami Levy and business partner Shalom Haim, completed its acquisition of a 51% stake in Israir in January 2021, with Levy himself taking a further 24%. At the time, the company was valued at ILS162 million (USD47 million). After Israir relinquished a USD5 million debt, which was one of the conditions of the deal, the valuation increased to ILS179 million (USD52 million).
Delayed by the pandemic, the listing now meets conditions that were set for Israir to receive ILS70 million (USD21 million) in state aid.
Predominantly a carrier oriented towards a leisure-travel network, Israir currently operates 22 scheduled routes, all of them out of Tel Aviv Ben Gurion, with a fleet of five A320-200s and three ATR72-500s, together with a single B737-800 wet-leased from Smartwings (Czechia), the ch-aviation capacities and ch-aviation fleets modules show.
