According to Reuters, an Israeli company called SK Group, which owns several defense brands including the Israel Weapon Industries (IWI) and Meprolight, will go public by doing an initial public offering (IPO) of its shares in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. The total sum of the listed shares will be about $565 million (2 billion shekels). The IPO is planned to be in 2018.

Brands owned by SK Group

Until this change, the SK Group was a private company owned by an Israeli businessman named Samy Katsav. There are no official comments from the owner or representatives of the company yet.

The news of these well-known small arms brands going public may mean that due to more financial resources invested into the companies we’ll see them growing bigger which may in its turn mean more firearms developed or decreased prices due to increased production capabilities. However, that might not be the case. According to Israeli newspaper called Calcalist, this move is done to finance the recently opened factory in India in cooperation with Indian Punj Lloyd company.

Another opportunity will obviously be the possibility to invest in these shares thus expanding your own defense industry investment portfolio and making it more geographically diversified.

The time will show how this changes will affect the companies and the industry.