Spring: How much of the valuation is liquid, and how much rests on level-3 marks
Even after deducting all liabilities from Spring's cash and quoted securities layer, the company still has roughly NIS 52.5 million of net liquid assets against a market cap of about NIS 45.6 million. That leaves the NIS 27.7 million level-3 private book as upside above the floor rather than part of the floor itself, but also as a concentrated pool of value that still depends on subjective marks.
The main article argued that Spring trades below its liquid layer. This continuation isolates a narrower question: how much of the current valuation is already visible in cash and quoted securities, and how much still depends on level-3 marks on private investments.
That distinction matters because if the floor is already covered by liquid assets, the debate around the private book is not really about whether a floor exists. It is about the size of the upside above that floor, and about how long the discount can persist before those marks turn into actual cash.
The conclusion is fairly sharp. Even on a conservative test, adding cash to quoted securities and deducting all balance-sheet liabilities leaves roughly NIS 52.5 million of net liquid assets against a market cap of about NIS 45.6 million as of April 3, 2026. In other words, the market is not paying for the NIS 27.7 million private portfolio today. If anything, it is pricing the equity as if the non-quoted assets carry negative value after the liquid layer.
There is an important nuance, though. The liquid layer is not a pile of idle cash. Only about NIS 10.0 million is cash and cash equivalents, while the rest is a NIS 47.2 million quoted securities portfolio. So the point is not that the floor is immune to volatility. The point is that the level-3 debate belongs mainly to the upside case, not to the floor case.
The Asset Floor: What Is Actually Liquid Here
This is the core read: the market cap sits below a strict liquidity test, not just below book equity.
| Item | NIS m | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Cash and cash equivalents | 10.0 | As of December 31, 2025 |
| Quoted securities | 47.2 | Classified as level 1 |
| Total liquid layer | 57.2 | Cash plus quoted assets |
| Current liabilities | 2.5 | Includes accrued liabilities and other current items |
| Non-current liabilities | 2.2 | Includes deferred taxes |
| Net liquid layer | 52.5 | After all balance-sheet liabilities |
| Market cap | 45.6 | Based on 8,419,877 shares and a 542 agorot share price on April 3, 2026 |
| Gap | 6.9 | Market cap is below the net liquid layer |
The message in that bridge is not only that there is a discount. It is where the discount sits. Even after deducting every liability on the balance sheet, Spring still gets to a liquid floor of about NIS 52.5 million, which is roughly NIS 6.9 million above the current market cap. A less stringent cross-check points in the same direction: the company also reports working capital surplus of NIS 55.2 million.
It also matters how that liquid layer is built. The quoted book includes NIS 15.1 million in listed tech companies and funds, NIS 5.4 million in money-market funds, NIS 5.8 million in government bonds, NIS 12.1 million in corporate bonds, NIS 8.6 million in mutual funds and other holdings, and another NIS 0.3 million in other shares. So the floor is liquid, but it is not cash-flat. Public market moves can still push it around, especially through the listed tech sleeve.
That is the key forensic takeaway: level 3 is not what currently holds up the floor. Even if an investor applies a meaningful haircut to the private marks, the market cap still sits below the layer that already has observable prices or cash backing.
Where Level 3 Actually Sits
If the floor does not rely on level 3, that does not make the private book immaterial. It is still highly material. As of December 31, 2025, the entire NIS 27.7 million private portfolio is classified as level 3, while the full NIS 47.2 million quoted securities portfolio is level 1. That is exactly the line this continuation needs to draw: what already has a market price, and what still depends on valuation judgment.
What matters most here is concentration. Journey alone stands at NIS 13.1 million, Wellborn at NIS 7.9 million, and the rest of the private holdings at NIS 6.7 million. Put differently, about 75.8% of the private book sits in just two holdings. That matters because the debate over "the private portfolio" is not really about a broad fog of small positions. It is mainly about two marks and then a smaller residual basket.
That cuts both ways. On the one hand, concentration makes it easier to understand where the accounting risk actually sits. On the other hand, it also means that valuation judgment on one holding can dominate a large part of the value that sits above the liquid floor.
What 2025 Actually Proved, and What It Did Not
The first number not to smooth over is that the private book did not surge. It moved from NIS 25.7 million at the end of 2024 to NIS 27.7 million at the end of 2025, an increase of only about NIS 2.0 million.
Journey
Journey was the main driver of that increase. Its fair value rose from NIS 9.5 million to NIS 13.1 million, a NIS 3.6 million increase. But it would be wrong to read all of that as pure mark expansion. During 2025, the company injected about NIS 2.6 million of shareholder loans into Journey, while the reported fair-value gain for the year was about NIS 1.0 million. So most of the balance-sheet move in Journey came from a mix of fresh capital and mark-up, not from an external market validation event on its own.
Wellborn
Wellborn is almost the opposite case. The year-end fair value only moved from NIS 7.7 million to NIS 7.9 million, so the carrying value increase was just NIS 0.3 million. And yet the company reports NIS 2.166 million of gain from Wellborn in 2025. The reason is that this number includes a NIS 1.654 million dividend received in cash. That is actually higher-quality evidence than an internal mark because part of the value left the spreadsheet and became cash. But it also means 2025 did not deliver a major year-end re-rating here.
The Residual Basket
The remaining private-holdings basket fell from NIS 8.6 million to NIS 6.7 million. That is not a rounding error. More than that, Ember Digital was sold in August 2025, with Spring's share of the proceeds at NIS 1.029 million and a realized loss on disposal of NIS 0.833 million. So 2025 also produced the opposite kind of evidence from what investors usually worry about: not every exit from the private book closes above carrying value.
Put those three pockets together and the picture is much less dramatic than the headline of a NIS 27.7 million private portfolio. The book did rise, but not through broad-based validation of every mark. Most of the improvement sat in Journey, a large part of the Wellborn outcome arrived through cash dividend, and the residual bucket actually weakened.
Why the Auditor Flagged This
This follow-up cannot stop at the balance sheet. It also has to ask what the audit itself highlighted as the central accounting judgment. Here the answer is unambiguous: the auditor identified the fair-value assessment of illiquid financial instruments as a key audit matter.
That is not boilerplate. The audit report explicitly says the NIS 27.7 million fair value of the private investments is determined using different valuation methods and relies on significant estimates, uncertainty, and subjective judgment. That is why the audit work covered the valuation methodology, management discussions about investee status and financing rounds, the assumptions and parameters used, external valuers where relevant, and the financial statements of the investment funds themselves.
The financial-instruments note adds the second half of the picture by defining level 3 as values based on inputs that are not observable in the market. That does not mean the marks are wrong. It does mean management judgment is not some side note here. It is the accounting center of gravity of the private book.
That leads to an important investor takeaway: a clean audit does not turn a mark into cash. It only tells you that the mark passed the audit process. Until that value gets validated through dividend, sale, external round, or listing, the market can keep applying a discount to it.
Bottom Line
The market is not currently arguing with Spring about whether the private book exists. It is simply refusing to pay for it. That is an important distinction. The market cap sits below a conservative test built only on cash and quoted securities after all liabilities. That makes the NIS 27.7 million private book an upside layer, not the foundation of the thesis.
But that is also why the quality of the mark still matters. It just matters in a different place. It moves from the floor debate to the debate over what has to happen for the discount to close. If Journey and Wellborn can convert some of that value into cash, distributions, or externally validated transactions, the market gets a much stronger anchor than an internal mark. If that does not happen, the discount on level 3 can remain even if the marks themselves stay formally intact.
The real trigger here is not another valuation line. It is the shift from accounting value to accessible value. In a holding company, that is the difference between a number that may be fair on paper and value the market is actually willing to pay for.
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