糖心视频

After a serious drought in public listings in 2022, Israel-based freight booking platform is preparing to go public via a deal with a special-purpose acquisition company on Thursday in what would be the first SPAC merger to list this year.

With companies continuing to struggle to raise late-stage capital in the private markets, it鈥檚 likely some others will look to SPACs 鈥� which have committed investors 鈥� as a way to bridge the gap.

鈥淲e’re going public primarily as a way of raising money,鈥� Freightos CEO told Crunchbase News prior to listing. 鈥淚t’s not because we are trying to exit or sell shares, or be in a hurry to be a public company. It’s a good way to raise capital right now.鈥�

Jerusalem-based Freightos is valued at $500 million and raised around $80 million via the listing. The company had announced its merger with Denver-based Gesher Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: GIAC) on May 31, 2021. As part of the merger, Gesher CEO will join Freightos鈥� board.

鈥淎 SPAC is actually superior from my perspective to an IPO,鈥� Schreiber said, as 鈥渋t’s bringing us high-quality long-term investors who are going to be real partners.鈥�

One of those investors is London-based , which 鈥� along with other leading investors as well as executives and employees 鈥斅燼greed to a two-year lockup, with some unlocking at six months, one year and 18 months. Unlike with an IPO process, Freightos鈥� leading SPAC investors have built a relationship with the company and are not investing with an eye for an IPO pop to make a quick return.

Prior to the SPAC listing, Freightos had raised $118 million, according to Crunchbase data. Its leading investors include , , the and the American-Israeli venture capital firms and .

Streamlining container shipments

Freightos aims to make booking large freight transport as streamlined as booking a flight. Part of the reason it鈥檚 taken so long for the freight industry to digitize is that 鈥渃argo doesn’t walk itself onto the plane and off the plane and through customs,鈥� said Schreiber.

Freightos has built not just a price comparison, but also a routing engine, he said.

Its platform brings together three parts of the ecosystem: The importer and exporters, the freight forwarders who handle the cargo, and the carriers 鈥� the airlines and ocean liners.

Freightos is multinational with its biggest offices in Jerusalem, Barcelona and Romala in the Palestinian territories. Its revenue in 2022 was around $20 million, according to the company. It expects booking in 2023 to be over $1 billion.

Illustration: Dom Guzman