Mobileye Global (Nasdaq: MBLY), an Israeli self-driving car and advanced driver-assistance systems unit, had a lucrative Wall Street debut Wednesday.
Mobileye returned to Wall Street after five and a half years as an Intel-owned private company. The IPO (initial public offering) was the largest on Wall Street this year, making it the most valuable Israeli company, easily surpassing Check Point Software Technologies (Nasdaq: CHKP), valued at $14.6 billion.
The Mobileye share price rose 38% to $28.97 on the first day of trading, giving the company a market capitalization of $23.068 billion.
Despite Mobileye’s strong performance, it should be noted that the company initially planned to hold the IPO last year at a company valuation of $50 billion after Intel acquired it in 2017 for $15.2 billion.
However, the market’s poor performance this year forced Intel to reduce Mobileye’s valuation, and the flotation (the process of changing a private company into a public company by issuing shares and encouraging the public to purchase them) was held on Wednesday at a company valuation of just under $17 billion. Mobileye may have set a lower price in hopes of enticing investors and creating momentum that would raise the company’s market cap.