Your money's no good here

It seems Israel's banks don't want to touch the money of the latest ingathered exiles

Feb 6, 2023

Today’s TLV Strategist is sponsored by Axis Tel Aviv’s Global Deal Making conference, slated for Feb. 14, 2023 at the Peres Center in Tel Aviv-Yafo. Celebrating 10 years of bringing together investors and Israeli startups, this year’s program focuses on Smart Mobility & Cities, Retail Tech, Web3 & Metaverse, and, Climate & Energy. Readers can get a 15% discount on registration by using the code “TLVStrategist” when you register on Eventbrite.

It’s looking more and more like Israel’s banks want nothing to do with the 70,000 new immigrants who landed here last year in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That’s the conclusion of a survey by The Reboot Startup Nation, under the direction of the tireless Sophia Tupolev-Luz.

Name a bank and the survey reveals it threw up a barrier. Almost 40% of those immigrants had trouble opening a bank account, just to start. More than 60% polled reported challenges to transferring salaries or personal funds from abroad. One in three were refused banking services altogether.

All this while calls increase in the high tech sector to move companies’ funds out of Israel’s banks in protest of the ruling coalition’s attempts to override judges.

What a place.

What’s Here:

The Week That Was: Israel ETFs beat major gauges
Analyst Actions: DOX, TRMR, VRNS
Bloggers Weight In: CLBT, INMD, FROG
News of note: Crypto player Paxos expands Israel R&D

The Week That Was

Ishares MSCI Israel ETF (NYSEARCA:EIS) up 5.2%, vs. 4.1% gain in Nasdaq Composite, 1.98% gain in S&P 500, 0.1% decline in DJIA
BlueStar Israel Technology ETF (NYSEARCA:ITEQ) up 5.1%
VanEck Israel ETF (NYSEARCA:ISRA) up 4.7%
Ark Israel Innovative Technology ETF (BATS:IZRL) up 4.5% last week
ILS strengthened 1.1%

Analysts Do What Analysts Do

Amdocs (NASDAQ:DOX) - target hiked to $100 from $85 (Last close: $92.82) at Baird, no change in neutral rating. CFRA maintains buy rating. Oppenheimer raises target to $99 from $94, maintains outperform rating.
Tremor International (NASDAQ:TRMR) picked up by Lake Street coverage, starting with a buy rating and $12 target. (Last close: $8.12)
Varonis Systems (NASDAQ:VRNS) - downgraded to hold from buy at Needham. Baird downgraded to neutral from outperform, maintained $30 target. (Last close: $26.42)

Bloggers Weigh In

Cellebrite DI (NASDAQ:CLBT) at current levels (Last close: $5.54) doesn’t reflect the growth runway opportunity for the leader in the digital intelligence market space, writes Seeking Alpha blogger Miguel Marecos Duarte (Ranked 2,120 of 22,888 financial bloggers by TipRanks). The opportunity is echoed on SA by blogger Another Mountain’s Rock Investing, as the blogger assesses what’s in store for investors at the company integrates newly acquired Magnet Forensics.
Inmode (NASDAQ:INMD) is seeing the market overestimate short-term worries that likely won't have a material effect on long-term cash flows, according to Andrew Harvey, also on Seeking Alpha. He’s seeing the shares as undervalued by at least 40%, on both a relative basis and discounted cash flow. Meanwhile, blogger Evan Rodick’s downside case has the stock (Last close $37.24) already at fair value.
JFrog (NASDAQ:FROG) has Donovan Jones (TipRanks #1,678) concerned about the DevOps’ operating losses, which he notes are “high and worsening.” The blogger is telling investors to hold off on the shares until “management can make meaningful progress toward operating breakeven.”

Stablecoin issuer Paxos opens Israel cryptography security R&D center

Paxos, the New York-based blockchain and tokenization developer, said it will open an engineering research & development center of security and cryptography excellence in Israel.

According to the company’s website, they are currently looking to fill four engineering roles. Marina Bunin, director of Engineering of Paxos in Israel, said the firm intends to grow its team in the region over the course of 2023 and plans to expand further beyond that.

In addition to its PAX stablecoin (USDP), the company issued the world’s first regulated gold-back token, PAX Gold (PAXG). The fintech has raised more than $540 million from investors including Oak HC/FT, Declaration Partners, Founders Fund, Mithril Capital and PayPal Ventures.