Startup Nano Dimension Israel's Best-performing Tech Stock in 2015

Bloomberg published an article on Nano Dimension (TASE:NNDM,OTCQX:NNDMY), Israel’s best-performing technology stock last year.
According to the publication, the company, which is lodged in the same building as major 3D printing company Stratasys Ltd. (NASDAQ:SSYS), owes some of its success to the “unorthodox route” it took in raising $18 million and going public:

Nano Dimension found its way onto the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange using what’s known as a reverse merger. This involves a private company taking over a public one, bypassing the formalities of an IPO. “We’re selling shares like any other public company,” said Amit Dror, the chief executive officer of Nano Dimension. “It’s just that it happens to be that our case is a public company that’s pre-revenue.
Dror said he spent two months holding 20 pitch meetings with private investors as he tried to drum up funding for Nano Dimension. With no attractive offers, he turned to Itschak Shrem, a 68-year-old finance whiz familiar to many Israelis because their pension funds bear his name. Shrem took on the role of chairman at Nano Dimension and guided the startup through a reverse merger over the following six months. The company completed the process in August 2014, raising $1.5 million. It was enough to fund development of Nano Dimension’s first prototype 3D printer.

Shrem is now using his experience to help other startups in Israel with going public — while the reverse merger strategy he’s now known for can be risky, he believes he’s gained investors’ trust. And indeed, Nano Dimension certainly seems to be attracting positive attention:

Nano Dimension made 3D printing seem sexy to some investors when others began to lose hope. Stratasys’s shares have fallen because many investors believe 3D printers won’t be in every home or revolutionize manufacturing overnight, said Brian Drab, an analyst at William Blair & Co. “If you could paint a situation where you have 3D printing technology that really is going to be disruptive to some small niche of some small end market, that’s a much better story.”
Dror said Nano Dimension is doing just that. Its target customers—it still doesn’t have any—are electronics and defense companies. The printed circuit boards it makes are etched with highly conductive silver made from nano particles. Dror said the printer can cut companies’ turnaround time for certain prototypes from weeks to hours.
If a review by the SEC goes well, next up for Nano Dimension is uplisting from the U.S. OTC market to the Nasdaq Capital Market, which has the lowest pricing requirements offered by the exchange. That, and finding someone to buy one of its 3D printers.

Click here to read the full Bloomberg article.