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The Premira Fund is on its way to re-purchase the NDS at a fifth price
Six years after selling it to Cisco for $ 5 billion, the European investment fund is in talks to buy the battered Jerusalem company for $ 1 billion
06:53
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Meir Orbach
They say lightning does not hit twice, but it turns out that every rule has an exception. Calcalist has learned that the Permira investment fund is about to acquire NDS from Cisco six years after it sold it . It is estimated that the purchase will amount to hundreds of millions of dollars and may reach up to a billion dollars.
The company bought by Cisco focused on information security for cable and satellite television and is still considered a leader in the field. The company that Pharmira will acquire, if the deal is completed, is very far from the company it sold to Cisco in 2012. NDS was profitable, entering $ 1 billion a year, employing 1,300 workers in Israel and a similar number worldwide. The management of the company was stable with a number of managers who had worked there for years, including Abe Peled, the company's chairman and CEO, Rafi Kesten, who ran the company in Israel, and Yorai Feldman, who managed the company's development. "It is now estimated that Cisco employs approximately 700-800 employees at NDS in Jerusalem.
Since 2012, the giant acquisition has not been able to justify itself for Cisco , and has been perceived by many as too expensive and queer. Cisco CEO and CEO Chuck Robbins is trying to keep his company competitive because networks are moving away from hardware-based activities that once dominated the industry and helped make it one of the largest networks in the world. NDS also introduced Scientific Atlatana, which led the set-top box, but Netflix's entry into the Internet and cable network has made cable and satellite support a burden for the company, generating revenues and profits but not a future based on software, cloud and networks.
NDS employees were not satisfied after the acquisition. Despite the many hopes that were in the acquisition both for the buyer and for the company's employees, waves of layoffs began very quickly, mainly due to Cisco's change of direction, which decided on a new strategy that kept it away from traditional cable or satellite TV, giving priority to the cloud, cyber and communications. These changes made the Jerusalem company into a cash cow, which, according to estimates, was estimated to cost about $ 1 billion a year to Cisco, but no plans were made to develop it further.
If the company is sold, the technology giant from San Jose, California, will remain in Israel with only 500 employees and a much less significant development center than in the past. During their visit to Israel, John Chambers, the former CEO and chairman of Cisco, and Chuck Robbins, CEO and current chairman, also emphasized their commitment to Israel. Towards the global company.
NDS was founded in 1988 by ten scientists from the Weizmann Institute on the basis of advanced encryption technology developed by Israel Prize laureate Prof. Adi Shamir. A decade later the company was sold to Rupert Murdoch for $ 15 million, in 1999 it was floated on Nasdaq for the first time.