After a three-year dearth of IPOs on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, certainly of large companies, Ampa (TASE: AMPA) came along and carried out the biggest equity offering since 2022 in terms of valuation (NIS 3 billion post-money) and since 2017 in terms of the offering itself (NIS 600 million). After a 15% rise in the share price within two weeks, Ampa’s market cap is now NIS 3.4 billion.
Besides the historical milestones, the flotation of Ampa, controlled by the Nakash brothers (owners of Jordache Enterprises) and Shlomi Fogel (co-owner and chairperson of Israel Shipyards) also provides a window onto the changes that the Israeli economy in general and the real estate market in particular have undergone in recent decades.
A company that started life in 1937 under the British mandate as an agency for imports of trucks and cranes (Ampa stands for America Palestine Automobile), and later became active in industry as well, is now mainly identified with the construction and letting of office buildings housing local and global technology companies, alongside the tangential activity of shared workspaces, through WeWork Israel.
“We are the most sensitive sensor for the office market,” says Zohar Levi (59), who was appointed CEO of Ampa last year after two decades in charge of its real estate business. Interviewed after the IPO, Levi says that the office market, which has been stagnant for two years because of the war and the decline in fund raising by technology companies, could be on the verge of a turning point.
Four years ago, when WeWork, which was founded by Israeli Adam Neumann, encountered financial difficulties, it gave Ampa the franchise for operating shared workspaces (mainly for technology companies) in Ampa’s properties in Israel, and the right to construct new workspaces under the WeWork brand.
“In the past two months we have felt a rise in the number of leads and inspections (by potential tenants, E.G.). It feels better than the position we were in six months ago when it comes to site traffic,” Levi says. “We all believe and hope that when the war ends there will be a significant improvement in the local economy in general and in high-tech in particular. As far as we are concerned, we’ll see considerable growth in the number of startups, which usually begin by renting workspace.”
Will you continue to develop this activity?
Levi: “We’ll expand WeWork. Today, every real estate player realizes that every large office project should allocate 5-10% of the space to shared workspaces. It’s a complementary product that generates customers for the property owner that grow within the building. We have had many customers that grew and there was no room to give them, so they took regular office space from the property owner.”
What’s your advantage over the many other shared workspace sites that now operate in Israel?
“WeWork, unlike its competitors, is global, and that’s a huge advantage. It’s also the reason that it has customers like Salesforce, Microsoft, and TikTok. These companies won’t go to the competition for the simple reason that the agreements are signed in the US, and they just have to do copy and paste here.”
Ampa’s IPO revealed WeWork Israel’s figures for the first time. Ampa currently operates fourteen shared workspace sites in Israel, nine of them in Tel Aviv. The total area is 102,000 square meters, with over 15,000 workstations. Average occupancy last year was 81%, which compares with 92% in 2022.
Last year, the revenue from the WeWork business, NIS 280 million, accounted for 40% of Ampa’s total revenue. The operating profit on that activity, however, was just NIS 9 million out of a total of NIS 414 million. This was because of downward revaluations of the shared workspace properties of over NIS 300 million, together with the decline in occupancy.
Nevertheless, Levi’s eyes sparkle when he talks about his plans for the shared workspaces activity. “This is the first time in history that there’s some kind of movement in the real estate business, which is an old business that doesn’t change,” he says. “I believe that we’re a progressive company in the sense that we like change, we like technology, we like new things, to try things out. And there’s nothing more new, interesting and fascinating than what has happened with WeWork.”
Exploiting the brand
Many preparative steps preceded Ampa’s IPO, among them the purchase of minority holdings that its owners held in various businesses that the company controls, for NIS 76 million in total, paid out of the offering proceeds. Levi himself sold to Ampa his 3.3% stake in WeWork Israel and a 5% stake in a renewable energy partnership for a total of NIS 15.5 million. Levi’s annual compensation cost is NIS 3.9 million.
Levi stresses that the deals were in important preparatory step for the IPO, simplifying the way the investment institutions could analyze the company. “The media coverage we received was not accurate,” Levi says. “It’s true that some of the proceeds of the offering went to the owners, but this was part of a required restructuring, because it was impossible to continue to run things that way,” he tries to explain.
One of the areas in which Levi says Ampa aspires to expand is residential development, with an emphasis on urban renewal. In the background is the growing interest is this field lately in the wake of the war with Iran, and the assumption that it will lead to greater momentum in projects around Israel.
How will you do this?
“We think that we have a company that, with its platform, is capable of a greater volume of activity that it has. In housing, it’s clear to everyone that urban renewal is something that will keep growing, and at the moment we’re there on a small scale, and we certainly plan to grow that activity. We think that it’s possible and necessary to exploit the Ampa brand to that end as well.”
In offices, the company is pinning its hopes mainly on the building rights it holds in high-demand areas. “The critical mass of our income-producing real estate (85%) is in sought-after Herzliya and Tel Aviv,” Levi says, adding, “The new plans we promoted vis-à-vis the planning authorities dramatically increased our building rights.
“In the existing buildings there are building rights of hundreds of thousands of square meters, and we don’t have to go looking far for growth potential. Just in Herzliya we have more than 200,000 square meters, in Tel Aviv we have another 50,000 square meters. Our historical assets are centrally located with great potential.”
Nevertheless, Levi stresses that it will take time to harvest the fruits of the investment. “Real estate is something that takes time,” he says, giving as an example the story of a Tel Aviv landmark, the Electra Tower on Yigal Alon Street. Among the tenants in the 59,000 square meter office building are Google, and law firms Goldfarb Seligman and Agmon & Tulchinsky. The building does not bear Ampa’s name, but it holds 75% of the rights in it, the remainder belonging to the Nakash family. Ampa was Electra’s partner in constructing the building, and later bought the latter’s share.
Levi says that when the building was built, at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008, the owners had no idea how the space would be let. “But when we received the Form 4 (the municipality’s approval for occupation of the building), we were practically a monopoly in the market for any company that wanted to rent 4,000-5,000 square meters or more of office space.
“Despite that, it took us almost two years to complete occupation. But since 2012, occupation rates have been almost 100%. Letting new office buildings is a business that takes time. Filling a tower takes several years, but I’m pretty sure that that the existing supply will be absorbed.”
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on July 27, 2025.
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