Caesarstone Ltd., or Caesarstone (, ''Even Qeysar''), is a publicly traded company that engages in the

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stati ...

and

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical ...

surfaces used for

kitchen A kitchen is a room or part of a room used for cooking and food preparation in a dwelling or in a commercial establishment. A modern middle-class residential kitchen is typically equipped with a stove, a sink with hot and cold running wate ...

countertop A countertop, also counter top, counter, benchtop, worktop (British English) or kitchen bench ( Australian or New Zealand English), bunker ( Scottish English) is a raised, firm, flat, and horizontal surface. They are built for work in kitchens ...

s, vanity tops,

flooring Flooring is the general term for a permanent covering of a floor, or for the work of installing such a floor covering. Floor covering is a term to generically describe any finish material applied over a floor structure to provide a walking surface ...

, wall cladding and general

interior design Interior design is the art and science of enhancing the interior of a building to achieve a healthier and more aesthetically pleasing environment for the people using the space. An interior designer is someone who plans, researches, coordi ...

. The company was founded in 1987 and is traded on the NASDAQ in New York (CSTE). Headquarters are located in Kibbutz

Sdot Yam Sdot Yam ( he, שְׂדוֹת יָם, ''lit.'' Sea Fields) is a kibbutz in the Haifa District of Israel. Located on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hof HaCarmel Regional Council. In it had a population of ...

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

, and its production facilities are in

and the

USA The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. Its products are sold in approximately 50 countries around the world through a network of 6 subsidiaries and numerous distributors.

Company profile

Caesarstone Ltd. manufactures quartz surfaces in three different sites, two in Israel – Kibbutz

and the Bar Lev Industrial Zone near

Karmiel Karmiel ( he, כַּרְמִיאֵל) is a city in northern Israel. Established in 1964 as a development town, Karmiel is located in the Beit HaKerem Valley which divides upper and lower Galilee. The city is located south of the Acre-Safed road, ...

, and in its new plant in Richmond Hill, GA, USA, since May 27, 2015. Caesarstone also has established warehouses and refinery plants in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. Its products, which are sold in over 50 countries around the world, are used in the interior design of both residential and commercial buildings. Common uses of Caesarstone's products include quartz surfaces for kitchen countertops, vanity tops, wall-cladding, flooring and interior design of commercial spaces such as

office An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific du ...

s, restaurants,

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a re ...

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

s, and more. Caesarstone's main competitors are companies that make use of materials such as

lamination Lamination is the technique/process of manufacturing a material in multiple layers, so that the composite material achieves improved strength, stability, sound insulation, appearance, or other properties from the use of the differing materia ...

and natural

stone In geology, rock (or stone) is any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter. It is categorized by the minerals included, its Chemical compound, chemical composition, and the way in which it is formed. Rocks ...

, and other companies that manufacture quartz surfaces such as Superior Zodiaq, Silestone and Cambria. The name Caesarstone comes from the company's location near Caesarea.

History

The Caesarstone factory commenced its operations in 1987, at Kibbutz Sdot Yam, replacing its

terrazzo Terrazzo is a composite material, poured in place or precast, which is used for floor and wall treatments. It consists of chips of marble, quartz, granite, glass, or other suitable material, poured with a cementitious binder (for chemical bind ...

tile

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. ...

. The company was established in the wake of development work performed jointly by members of the kibbutz and additional parties such as Professor Moshe Narkis of the Technion. After changing the focus from sale of floor tiles to quartz surfaces and establishing itself in the domestic market, the company started to export its products to different countries around the world. In 2005, an additional production facility was opened at the Bar-Lev Industrial Park. In 2006, TENE

Investment Fund An investment fund is a way of investing money alongside other investors in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of working as part of a group such as reducing the risks of the investment by a significant percentage. These advantages in ...

invested 25 million dollars in exchange for 21.7% control in the company, which led to the adding of another

production line A production line is a set of sequential operations established in a factory where components are assembled to make a finished article or where materials are put through a refining process to produce an end-product that is suitable for onward c ...

at the Bar-Lev facility. In 2008, the company began establishing subsidiaries in its main markets: Australia (2008),

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

(2010),

and

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

(2011) and UK (2017) along with activity conducted through distributors in approximately 50 countries. In 2012, Caesarstone started trading on NASDAQ in New York under the ticker symbol CSTE. In 2015, Caesarstone opened a new facility in the US with an investment of about 100 million dollars. The plant was built in Richmond Hill, Georgia, and provides quartz surfaces mainly to markets in North America, and other countries as well.

Products

The company's products are marketed in four collections: * Classico – the classic collection in a variety of colors. * Supernatural – design inspired by natural stone. * Motivo – surfaces with imprinted textures in various design templates. * Concetto – surfaces made from semi-precious gems cut and set manually. Quartz surfaces are claimed to require only minimum maintenance and not to require periodic sealing as with natural stone surfaces. In the US, quartz counter tops can be found in homes and kitchens such as

Tommy Hilfiger Thomas Jacob Hilfiger ( /hɪlˈfɪgər/; born March 24, 1951) is an American fashion designer and the founder of Tommy Hilfiger Corporation. After starting his career by co-founding a chain of jeans/fashion stores called People's Place in upst ...

, Cher, Alexandra von Furstenberg, and more. Due to the high

crystalline silica Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , most commonly found in nature as quartz and in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is one ...

in the dust created when working with engineered stone exposure can result in severe health risks.

Financial

Caesarstone's operations are impacted by the performance of the home remodeling and new construction sectors of the economy. In 2016, the global quartz surface industry constituted about 6% of to the total global surfaces industry, valued at about 95 billion dollars. In 2016, Caesarstone's share in the quartz surface market (in its leading markets) was: Israel 84%; Australia 55%; Canada 36%; USA 19%. In 2016, Caesarstone registered a

revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services related to the primary operations of the business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some companies receive reven ...

of 539 million dollars, 1.7% higher than the forecast. The

net profit In business and accounting, net income (also total comprehensive income, net earnings, net profit, bottom line, sales profit, or credit sales) is an entity's income minus cost of goods sold, expenses, depreciation and amortization, interest, ...

stood at 2.15 dollars per share as opposed to 2.12 dollars per share. For 2017, Caesarstone expects that revenue will stand at 580-595 million dollars and EBITDA in the range of 119-126 million dollars.

2012 Nasdaq IPO

In February 2012, Caesarstone filed with the

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...

to execute an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

of up to $115 million and list its shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Among the companies involved in the IPO were J.P. Morgan, Barclays, Credit Suisse, and Baird. Caesarstone's 6.7 million shares began trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market on 22 March and priced at $11 each. In 2015-2016, Caesarstone encountered challenges which included discord between shareholders and kibbutz members, departure of board members and CEO, and a report by Spruce Point hedge fund claiming that the company's quartz surfaces contain less than the commonly accepted amounts of quartz, and yet are still sold at premium prices. In 2016 the share price declined compared to its former peak, however in H1 2017, Caesarstone shares climbed 23 percent; thus, Caesarstone's value stands at 1.49 billion dollars.

Company profile

History

Products

Financial

2012 Nasdaq IPO

See also

References

External links