Ituran Location and Control Ltd. is an Israeli company that provides stolen vehicle recovery and tracking services, and markets

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

wireless communications products. Ituran is traded on

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

and is included in the

TA-100 Index The TA-125 Index, typically referred to as the Tel Aviv 125 and formerly the TA-100 Index, is a stock market index of the 125 most highly capitalised companies listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE). The index began on 1 January 1992 with ...

. Ituran has over 3,200 employees worldwide and is a market leader in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

, Israel and the United States. As of June 2020, the company has over than 2M subscribers.

Corporate history

Ituran was established in 1994 by the

Tadiran Tadiran refers to a former Israeli conglomerate, which was founded in 1962 by the merger of two companies, Tadir and Ran (itself founded as a batteries manufacturer in 1932). The name of the company is a joining of both companies’ names. Through ...

conglomerate to develop and operate a service for locating stolen vehicles using a technology that was originally developed for military use at Tadiran Telematics, a subsidiary of Tadiran Communications. The core technology was originally developed and licensed by Tadiran from Teletrac USA. Teletrac was founded as International Teletrac Systems in 1988. It received initial funding from a unit of AirTouch Communication (formerly known as Pacific Telesis) in exchange for 49% equity of the company. Teletrac contracted Tadiran to build base stations for their US system which were later used under license in deploying the network in Israel. Ituran's office

In 1995

decided to sell the Ituran concept to a group of investors headed by Izzy Sheratzky. In 1998 the company had 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 investment ...

on the

Tel Aviv Stock Exchange The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE; ; colloquially known as The Bursa, ) is Israel's only public stock exchange and a public company that has been traded on the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange since August 1, 2019. Legally, the exchange is regulated by ...

, raising the capital required to develop the service overseas in the United States,

and

. In November 1999 Ituran acquired Tadiran Telematics, which continued to manufacture the

vehicle tracking system A vehicle tracking system combines the use of automatic vehicle location in individual vehicles with software that collects these fleet data for a comprehensive picture of vehicle locations. Modern vehicle tracking systems commonly use GPS or G ...

s Ituran was using for its services, for $10 million. The acquisition enabled Ituran to reduce the cost of the systems it sold. Ituran changed the company's name to Telematics Wireless. In 2005 Ituran raised approximately $50 million in an initial public offering on Nasdaq, which gave the company a value of $294 million. In April 2007 Ituran acquired the Mapa group for $13 million. The Mapa Group consists of three divisions: geographical databases, map publishing in print and online, satellite navigation and location-based services. In November 2007 Ituran sold Telematics Wireless to

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, borde ...

based ST Electronics, part of the

ST Engineering Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd, doing business as ST Engineering, is a Singaporean multinational technology and engineering group in the aerospace, smart city as well as defence and public security sectors. Headquartered in Singapore, ...

corporation, for $90 million. In 2011, Ituran signed an agreement with

Pelephone Pelephone ( he, פלאפון, , lit. "wonder phone") is a mobile network operator in Israel, and also the first company to offer mobile telephony services in Israel. Due to this, the brand-name "Pelephone" became the genericized trademark for mobi ...

which allows Ituran to use Pelephone's network to set up an

MVNO A mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) is a wireless communications services provider that does not own the wireless network infrastructure over which it provides services to its customers. An MVNO enters into a business agreement with a mobile ...

(mobile virtual network operator) venture. In 2012, Ituran announced that Ituran Brazil entered into agreement with General Motors Brazil ("GMB") through a company controlled by Ituran (51%). Ituran Brazil was founded in 1999 and has (as of the end of 2014) more than 310,000 active subscribers. In May 2018 a severe security vulnerability was discovered in the Ituran system. The vulnerability allows attackers to easily extract personal information of Ituran customers, including home addresses, phone numbers and car registration numbers. For some users it also allowed real-time tracking using the Ituran application. Following the discovery of the vulnerability, Ituran disabled the self-service portal for its Israeli customers, until the vulnerability is fixed.

Mapa

Mapa - Mapping and Publishing ( he, מפה - מיפוי והוצאה לאור, ''lit.'' map) is an Israeli cartographic and book publishing company, purchased in April 2007 the Ituran for US$13 million. Mapa was founded in 1985, under the name Sifrei Tel Aviv (''lit.'' Tel Aviv Books). It entered the field of cartography in 1994. Mapa eventually moved solely into cartography, becoming the market leader in map making for the public sector in 1995. It controlled close to 80% of the market in 2005. Mapa has been expanding its horizons since 1996, and now publishes books in all fields. It also exports some books. Mapa's workforce consists of approximately 70 employees.

References

{{TA 100 companies Economy of Israel Global Positioning System Science and technology in Israel Wireless locating Geographical technology Companies based in Tel Aviv Companies listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange Companies listed on the Nasdaq Israeli brands

Corporate history

Mapa

See also

External links

References