Israeli Start-Up Mobileye Files for $100M IPO
Mobileye N.V., which makes software and cameras that help cars avoid accidents, filed with U.S. regulators on Thursday to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering.
The Israel-based company listed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters to the IPO, according to a regulatory filing.
The company’s collision-avoidance technology is used in more than 3 million vehicles made by the likes of BMW and General Motors.
Mobileye’s systems include a windshield-mounted camera that takes pictures of what is in front of the driver. The images are processed and, in real-time, a small device on the dashboard gives the driver audio-visual warnings.
The company was founded in 1999 by Amnon Shashua, a professor of computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Israeli businessman Ziv Aviram. Shashua is the now the chairman and Aviram the chief executive of Mobileye, each with a stake of about 9 percent in the company.
Mobileye’s other top shareholders include Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Fidelity Investments, BlackRock, and Enterprise Holdings, the No 1 U.S. car rental company.
The company last year raised money from five investors that valued its equity at $1.5 billion.
Mobileye’s revenue doubled to $81.2 million for the year ended Dec. 31. The company swung to a profit of about $20 million in the year from a loss of $53 million a year earlier.
The company was looking to raise up to $500 million in an IPO based on a valuation of $2.5-$3 billion, the Calcalist financial news website reported in March.
Mobileye on Thursday did not say how many shares would be sold in the offering or the price the shares would be sold at.
The company intends to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “MBLY”.
The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its initial IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.
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