Israel’s Trendlines launches S’pore IPO, aims for late Nov Catalist listing

SINGAPORE — Trendlines Group, an Israeli company focused on developing technology-based companies in the medical and agricultural fields, launched an initial public offering yesterday to raise S$25 million.

Trendlines, which is targeting a Nov 26 listing on the Catalist board, will be the second Israeli company to list on the Singapore Exchange, and the first in a decade. The first company was Sarin Technologies, a company that develops and manufactures tools for the processing of diamonds and gemstones, on the SGX mainboard in 2005.

Most Israeli companies generally opt to go public on the NASDAQ in the United States, but Trendlines chose the SGX instead because of its size, said chairman and CEO Steve Rhodes: “We thought that we were too small (for NASDAQ) ... (so) we started looking for other markets.”

Four years ago the company began making a directional shift to expand into Asia, so it became logical to list on an Asian stock market. “The one that fit our size and stage best was Singapore,” Mr Rhodes said.

The company pulled a planned IPO in Toronto in September last year because of a lack of sufficient subscriptions by investors.

Trendlines will offer 75.7 million placement shares at S$0.33 apiece, the proceeds of which will be used to invest in incubators, make follow-up investments in existing companies and start new companies, Trendlines said yesterday. The offer closes at noon on Nov 24.

The IPO brings the company’s market capitalisation to S$167.9 million. On reasons for going public, Mr Rhodes said: “We have been working as a private company for the last eight years. We have gone from zero to being a company with a large portfolio with a growing value and we felt that it was time to bring in a lot of capital and scale what we were doing and to start looking at international expansion.”

Since coming to Singapore, the company has been pleased with the reaction from investors, as seen with a successful pre-IPO financing in June with a group of Singaporean investors, said Mr Rhodes.

Other than the IPO, the company will establish an incubator in Singapore by next year, which will employ about six staff. The company is in talks with potential local partners for the setup.