Amidar: How Much of the Cash Stack Is Actually Free After the Maintenance Fund, Designated Deposits, and the Bond Mechanism
At the end of 2025, Amidar shows a large liquidity stack, but at least NIS 282.6 million of it is already earmarked for the maintenance fund, designated deposits, and tenant-deposit refunds. Even what remains looks liquid, but the bond mechanism and maintenance obligations show this is an operating and credit cushion, not a fully free cash pile.
How Much of the Cash Is Actually Free
The main article argued that Amidar's government backstop stabilizes the credit story, but does not turn reported profit and reported liquidity into truly accessible cash. This follow-up isolates only that question: how much of the end-2025 liquidity stack is actually at management's discretion once the maintenance fund, designated deposits, and the bond mechanism are carved out.
At first glance, the balance sheet looks flush. Alongside NIS 146.4 million of cash and cash equivalents, Amidar holds another NIS 104.6 million in the maintenance and periphery-fund deposit, NIS 257.2 million of short-term investments, NIS 116.6 million of current and long-term designated deposits, and NIS 61.4 million of investments earmarked to refund tenant deposits. Together, that is a NIS 686.1 million stack that looks highly liquid.
But it is not one pool. At least NIS 282.6 million of that stack is already explicitly tied to a defined use or a matching liability: NIS 104.6 million in the maintenance and periphery-fund deposit, NIS 116.6 million in designated deposits, and NIS 61.4 million held against tenant-deposit refunds. After removing only those hard-tagged layers, what remains is NIS 403.6 million, effectively the cash balance plus the short-term securities portfolio. Even that is still a generous reading of economic freedom, because it does not yet deduct maintenance obligations, interest accrued on bond proceeds, or the uses that the February 2026 rating report already expects to be funded out of these balances.
| Layer | December 31, 2025 | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Cash and cash equivalents | NIS 146.4 million | The clearest cash layer on the balance sheet |
| Maintenance and periphery-fund deposit | NIS 104.6 million | Earmarked for maintenance-related uses, not free surplus cash |
| Short-term investments | NIS 257.2 million | Liquid on paper, but still part of a managed liquidity framework |
| Current and long-term designated deposits | NIS 116.6 million | Cash with an address, with the current balance explicitly linked to apartment purchases out of bond proceeds |
| Investments for tenant-deposit refunds | NIS 61.4 million | Asset held against a matching tenant-deposit liability |
| Total cash, investments, and deposit-like balances | NIS 686.1 million | Far from a fully discretionary cash pool |
That is the key number. One can debate whether every shekel of the remaining NIS 403.6 million is truly free, but it is hard to debate that at least NIS 282.6 million is not.
The Maintenance Fund Is Liquid, but Not Free
The most misleading number in Amidar's liquidity presentation is NIS 251.0 million. That is how the management report combines cash, cash equivalents, and the maintenance-fund deposit. It is a convenient way to present liquidity, but it mixes together two pots that behave very differently: NIS 146.4 million of ordinary cash and cash equivalents, versus NIS 104.6 million of maintenance and periphery-fund cash.
That is the line between liquid and free. The maintenance fund was not created as excess cash. It sits inside a recurring profit-earmarking mechanism that keeps getting larger. In 2023, about NIS 26 million was approved from profits generated by three urban-renewal projects. In 2024, another roughly NIS 30.8 million was approved from 2023 profits. In 2025, NIS 43.1 million was approved out of 2024 profits, including NIS 2.9 million because collections fell short of the agreement target, with the rest reflecting the 50% net-profit earmark. After the balance-sheet date, on March 26, 2026, an additional NIS 27.2 million was approved out of 2025 profit, subject to Government Companies Authority approval.
This is not a one-off reserve. It is a mechanism that absorbs profit year after year. The balance sheet shows that from both sides. By year-end 2025, the maintenance and periphery-fund deposit had risen to NIS 104.6 million. At the same time, within other payables of NIS 154.6 million, the company reports a renovation obligation of NIS 89.0 million. The management report says that line rose mainly because of the NIS 43.2 million earmark, partly offset by about NIS 13.8 million of maintenance works already carried out.
In other words, the maintenance-fund deposit is not idle cash. It comes in on the asset side and reappears on the liability side as maintenance obligations. Anyone counting it together with ordinary cash as though both are equally available is overstating free liquidity.
Designated Deposits Mean Cash with an Address
If the maintenance fund is the portion of profit that never became truly free, the designated deposits are the portion of cash that arrived with a preset use. At the end of 2025, Amidar reported NIS 53.3 million of current designated deposits and another NIS 63.3 million of long-term designated deposits, or NIS 116.6 million in total.
The annual report gives an important clue here: the decline in the current designated-deposit balance mainly reflected roughly NIS 8 million of payments for apartment purchases made out of bond-issuance proceeds. That is a small sentence with a large implication. It tells the reader that these balances are not sitting inside a general liquidity pool. They are part of the bond-financing and apartment-purchase mechanism.
The contract says so explicitly as well. The issuance proceeds and the returns generated on them are deposited into a designated account, and they may be used only for apartment purchases, purchase fees and related expenses, and issuance costs and interest. Even the income generated on those balances is not recognized as Amidar's income. It is recorded as payables to the state. That is why other payables also include about NIS 30.2 million of accrued interest on the bond proceeds, whose use remains subject to the bond agreement.
The same logic applies to the NIS 61.4 million of investments held to refund tenant deposits. There is a NIS 61.4 million asset on one side and NIS 61.4 million of tenant deposits on the liability side. Technically liquid does not mean economically free.
That is why anyone trying to bridge Amidar's balance sheet into a "free cash" number cannot stop at the cash line. They have to read the labels.
The Bond Mechanism Separates Debt Service from Operating Cash, but Does Not Create Surplus Cash
Amidar's bond structure is paradoxical. It makes the credit story easier to read, while making the cash story less generous. On the one hand, it largely separates debt service from ordinary operating cash flow. Midroog says so directly: bond service is not dependent on Amidar's ongoing operating cash flows and is not directly exposed to the company's business and financial condition. As of September 30, 2025, Midroog described annual bond amortization of NIS 100 million, designated deposits of about NIS 123 million, and cash plus short-term investments of roughly NIS 370 million.
On the other hand, that separation does not create a free cash surplus. At year-end 2025, Amidar had a current bond amortization liability of NIS 100 million, matched by a current financial receivable from the state in the same amount. That means the near-term repayment is not supposed to come out of the ordinary operating cash box. But it also means the cash that circulates around this mechanism should not be treated as general excess liquidity.
| Bond-mechanism item | December 31, 2025 | How to read it |
|---|---|---|
| Current bond amortization | NIS 100.0 million | Scheduled near-term debt service |
| Current financial receivable from the state | NIS 100.0 million | Asset intended to fund that repayment |
| Reserve fund | NIS 50.0 million | Dedicated cushion for the last payment or for delayed state transfers |
| Accrued interest on bond proceeds inside other payables | About NIS 30.2 million | Not free company income, but an agreement-bound amount |
There is another detail that shows why this is not frictionless surplus cash. In the note describing the bond-funding agreement, the company says that if the reserve fund is used, the state is supposed to replenish it within six months, and that Amidar is working to amend the agreement so replenishment happens within three months. In the dedicated bondholders disclosure, by contrast, the company describes a mechanism under which it must act to refill the reserve fund within three months of using it. That is not necessarily an immediate credit problem, but it is a reminder that this liquidity is managed through contracts and timing mechanics, not through an untouched cash hoard.
There is another necessary caution. Midroog explicitly says that the bond-funding agreement is not a direct state guarantee to bondholders, and does not fully isolate the state's payments from a scenario in which Amidar would cease to be a going concern. So the right reading of the bond mechanism is not that debt no longer matters. The right reading is that debt service is routed through designated accounts and state-linked support, which reduces pressure on the operating cash box while also preventing readers from calling that entire box free cash.
So How Much Is Really Free
The bottom line is simpler than the debate around it. Amidar has comfortable liquidity, but it does not have a free cash pile on the scale implied by the headline view. Out of NIS 686.1 million of cash, investments, and deposit-like balances that look liquid, at least NIS 282.6 million is already explicitly tied to the maintenance fund, designated deposits, and tenant-deposit refunds. The remaining NIS 403.6 million is not small, but it is not automatically equal to cash that management can redeploy freely.
That is true for two reasons. First, other payables already include a NIS 89.0 million renovation obligation and about NIS 30.2 million of interest accrued on bond proceeds. Second, the February 2026 rating report does not describe the balances as excess liquidity. It says part of them is expected to fund maintenance and urban renewal investments.
So the answer to the headline question is this: Amidar is not short of cash, but a large part of its liquidity is already working for someone else or for a predefined use. It is a good operating and debt-service cushion. It is not a large pool of genuinely free cash in the way one might read a conventional real-estate balance sheet.