According to the PwC Israel High-Tech Exit Report, Israeli companies’ M&A and IPOs soared to an all-time high of $82.4 billion in 2021. This is a 520 percent increase over the $15.4 billion exited in 2020. With the addition of approximately $25 billion in venture capital funding, the total amount invested in Israeli technology in 2021 will surpass $100 billion.
PwC reported a total of 171 transactions (mergers and acquisitions and initial public offerings) in 2021, up from 60 last year. The average deal value over the last year reached $482 million, representing a 190 percent increase over 2020 when the average deal value was $257 million.
Even if the number of deals completed in 2020 was relatively low due to the advent of the Covid-19 epidemic, the figures for 2021 are still much higher than in prior years.
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This year’s IPO record stands out, with 72 offers worth nearly $71 billion. Unicorns completed 21 offers in which they were valued at more than $1 billion. Twenty-one of the twenty-one unicorns went public on Wall Street, with the exception being financial business Nayax, which is listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
The year’s highest-valued IPO was ironSource, which raised $11 billion. SentinelOne was valued at $9 billion, followed by monday.com at $6.8 billion. There was also a rise in the number of initial public offerings (IPOs) on the local stock exchange, with 45 technology businesses going public, with Nayax (valued at $1 billion) and Glassbox (valued at $350 million) being the most notable.
Apart from initial public offerings, 2016 is also a record year for acquisitions, with 99 transactions totaling $11.5 billion (an increase of 180 percent compared to 2020). Local buyer activity increased dramatically, with 32 transactions involving an Israeli buyer and seller, as demonstrated by Avanan (bought by Check Point) and Vdoo (acquired by JFrog).
Yaron Weizenbluth, Partner and Head of PwC Israel’s High-Tech Cluster, stated: “We’ve managed to narrow into a year a process that was expected to take a decade in terms of humanity’s recognition of the importance and technological need. In 2022 the valuations will be challenged, and we will see another wave of acquisitions and IPOs in the second half of the year.”
