Ituran Location and Control Ltd. is an Israeli company that provides stolen vehicle recovery and tracking services, and markets GPS wireless communications products. Ituran is traded on

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

and is included in the TA-100 Index. Ituran has over 3,200 employees worldwide and is a market leader in

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

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

History

Ituran was established in 1994 by the Tadiran 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. In 1995, Tadiran 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 investm ...

on the

Tel Aviv Stock Exchange The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE; ), colloquially known as The Bursa, is the only public stock exchange in Israel and a public company itself, listed on its own exchange since August 1, 2019. It is regulated by the ''Securities Law (1968)'' a ...

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

and

. In November 1999, Ituran acquired Tadiran Telematics, which manufactured the vehicle tracking systems Ituran was using for its services, for $10 million. The acquisition enabled Ituran to reduce the cost of the systems it sold. Ituran then changed their 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 an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

based ST Electronics, part of the

ST Engineering ST Engineering, is a global technology, defence and engineering group with a diverse portfolio of businesses across the aerospace, smart city, defence and public security segments. Headquartered in Singapore, the group reported a revenue of ov ...

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

Pelephone Pelephone (, , lit. "miracle 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 A generic tradema ...

which allows Ituran to use Pelephone's network to set up an MVNO (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 allowed 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 (, ''lit.'' map) is an Israeli cartographic and book publishing company, purchased in April 2007 by Ituran for $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 map making 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

History

Mapa

See also

External links

References