initial public offerings (IPOs) trading on American exchanges

Thursday, March 6, 2014

MediWound Ltd., an Israeli biotech company, files for IPO

MediWound Ltd., an Israeli biotech company, said it’s planning an initial public offering a week after Varonis Systems (VRNS) Inc. raised $105.6 million in an IPO in New York.

MediWound said yesterday that it plans to sell as much as $80 million of shares in an IPO on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Varonis Systems, a New York-based security software designer that was founded by Israeli entrepreneurs, sold 4.8 million shares at $22 a piece on Feb 27. The stock doubled to $44 on the first day of trading and climbed 4.2 percent yesterday.

Israeli companies are finding investor demand for share offerings even as Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine roils global markets because many of the IPOs from the Middle Eastern country last year rallied, according to Rudy Balseiro, the managing director of equity capital markets at Needham & Co. Wix.com Ltd., an Israeli provider of online tools that help create websites, and Kamada Ltd., a maker of treatments for hereditary lung disease, soared more than 80 percent since their debut last year.

“Whenever something performs, folks always come back looking for more,” Balseiro said in a telephone interview from New York. “It’s growth companies, the market is as open as it’s been for awhile for emerging growth equity, and that’s what Israel is giving us.”

Compugen Ltd., a biotechnology company using computer algorithms to identify targets for cancer drugs, took advantage of an 80 percent surge in the stock since Aug. 5 to sell 6 million shares last month.

A 78 percent jump in the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index in the past 12 months is also luring health-care companies.

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