After a $100 million profit windfall, AP Partners sets its sights on a $400 million fund
EXCLUSIVE: The Israeli private equity firm closes two exits in December and moves to scale up its next fundraising round.
Two exits in one month, nearly NIS 315 million in profit ($98.6 million), and a fundraising push that could double in size: AP Partners is moving quickly from harvesting returns to preparing its next growth phase.
As first reported by Calcalist, the Israeli private equity fund AP Partners on Thursday completed its exit from nutritional supplement manufacturer TopGum, delivering a fourfold return on its investment. The sale marks the fund’s second exit this month, following its earlier divestment from security systems manufacturer RP Optical, which generated a fivefold return. Together, the two exits produced a combined profit of NIS 314.5 million ($98.6 million) over roughly six years.
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AP Partners founders (from right): Hagai Stadler, Shmuel Vlodinger, Israel Shlisher and Eyal Hevroni
(Photo: Aharon Gedalia)
With liquidity events piling up, AP Partners, founded by Hagai Stadler, Israel Shlisher, Eyal Hevroni, and Shmuel Vlodinger, formerly a senior partner at FIMI, is now preparing to raise its third fund in 2026. According to Calcalist, the fundraising target is $350-400 million, up to twice the size of its second fund raised in 2022 and as much as four times larger than its inaugural fund, launched in 2018.
AP Partners’ current portfolio includes 14 companies, among them meat processor Soglowek, seed development firm Harmoniz Seeds, and Ilsar, which cultivates truffle mushrooms in the Golan Heights. Market estimates suggest the fund may pursue IPOs for some portfolio companies in the coming year, depending on market conditions.
Founded in 2018, AP Partners specializes in small and mid-sized industrial companies, with a deliberate focus on businesses outside the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and outside the technology sector. “We realized that everyone is focused on tech and the center of the country, so we went looking for other worlds,” Stadler said. “You won’t find us with a whiskey and a cigar. I wear Blundstone boots, jeans, and a T-shirt. This is a blue-collar fund.”
That positioning also explains the fund’s relatively swift exit from TopGum after five years, a move that surprised parts of the capital market. “We focus on companies with EBITDA of NIS 30-70 million a year ($9.-22 million),” Stadler said. “Once TopGum grew beyond that, with a market value of NIS 1.7 billion ($533 million), it was ready to move on without us.”
According to Stadler, AP Partners’ role is not only to provide capital but also to drive organizational change and build management infrastructure for international expansion. That process included appointing Eyal Shohat, former CEO of SodaStream, as TopGum’s CEO in December 2023, and Raviv Zoller, former CEO of ICL, who joined this month as executive chairman.
AP Partners first invested in TopGum in 2020, when the company was valued at just NIS 120 million ($37.6 million). The fund invested a total of NIS 77 million ($24.1 million). TopGum went public in August 2021, raising about NIS 100 million ($31.3 million) at a valuation of NIS 360 million ($112.9 million) before money and NIS 460 million ($144.2 million) after money.
The fund began liquidating its stake in February, nearly three and a half years after the IPO. It sold shares worth about NIS 80 million ($25.1 million) to institutional investors, followed by an additional NIS 50 million ($15.7 million) sale in August. These transactions reduced AP Partners’ holding from 25.4% to 10.2%.
On Thursday, the fund sold its remaining shares for NIS 144 million ($45.1 million), primarily to Altshuler Shaham, which purchased about NIS 100 million ($31.3 million) of the stock. The sale was executed at NIS 11.5 per share ($3.60), a 15% discount to Wednesday’s closing price, reflecting market movement since the deal’s terms were agreed.
In total, AP Partners sold TopGum shares for NIS 274 million ($85.9 million), generating a profit of NIS 197 million ($61.8 million).
Stadler described the five-year journey as unusually intense. “We went through a lot together,” he said, citing the events of October 7, 2023, when the company suffered casualties and even received reports of terrorists inside its Sderot factory. “And yet we had to project business continuity to the world.”
Earlier this month, AP Partners completed its exit from RP Optical, an optical and electro-optical systems manufacturer whose IPO in May became one of the strongest of the year. By the time AP Partners sold its final stake on December 8, the company’s shares had roughly doubled, reaching a market value of about NIS 1.3 billion ($408 million).
The fund sold its remaining 5.06% stake to Meitav in an off-exchange deal for NIS 52.5 million ($16.5 million), at NIS 14 per share ($4.39), a 25% discount to the prior closing price of NIS 18 ($5.64). AP Partners had originally invested NIS 29 million ($9.1 million) in December 2019 for a 50% stake, valuing RP Optical at NIS 58 million ($18.2 million).
Over subsequent transactions, including sales to Manor Evergreen and the Arkin Group, and the company’s IPO at a valuation of NIS 575 million ($180.3 million) before money and NIS 700 million ($219.4 million) after, AP Partners realized total proceeds of NIS 146.5 million ($45.9 million), yielding a profit of NIS 117.5 million ($36.8 million).
