A report issued by accounting firm PwC Israel shows a 33 percent decrease in the number of mergers and acquisitions (52) and IPOs (9) for privately held Israeli tech companies during 2018, compared with the previous year (70 deals overall).
Nevertheless, M&A activity continued through the end of the year. Here’s a roundup of M&A activity involving Israeli companies during December 2018.
Online gaming giant Playtika completed the acquisition of Berlin-based mobile game developer Wooga. Unofficial word has it that the deal is worth at least $100 million. Playtika is a multinational company whose 1,920 employees include a staff of 500 in its home Herzliya office.
“This acquisition marks a significant step in the execution of the company’s diversification strategy into new game genres. Following the acquisition, half of Playtika’s titles will be casual games,” announced Playtika, which was acquired by Caesars Interactive Entertainment in 2011 and then by a Chinese consortium for $4.4 billion in 2016.
Yavneh-headquartered Orbotech paid $85 million to complete a buyout of Frontline, a multinational company based in Rehovot that develops smart manufacturing processes.
Orbotech, whose systems are used to produce virtually every electronic device in the world, is in the midst of a $3.4 billion merger with KLA-Tencor announced last March.
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Verint Systems of Herzliya made two M&A deals in December.
Verint agreed to buy cloud voice of the customer (VoC) vendor ForeSee of New York for $58.9 million in cash at the closing of the transaction, and an additional deferred payment of $6 million. And it acquired Jerusalem-based NowForce, which makes emergency-response mobile applications, for an undisclosed amount.
Verint’s “actionable intelligence” solutions for customer engagement optimization, security intelligence, fraud, risk and compliance are used by some 10,000 organizations in more than 180 countries.
The TAL Education Group based in Beijing bought CodeMonkey Studios of Tel Aviv for $20 million. CodeMonkey’s online games teach children how to code.
Newater Technology of China signed an agreement to acquire AMS Technologies of Or Yehuda for $13.5 million. AMS develops and markets chemically and thermally stable ultrafiltration (UF) and nanofiltration (NF) membranes.
US-based Xenon Ventures acquired Tel Aviv-based Xplenty for an undisclosed sum. Xplenty offers a cloud-based data integration platform. Xenon Ventures, which provides SaaS companies with support in engineering, design, sales, growth-hacking, and operations, will move Xplenty’s headquarters to the United States.