Tigbur: The Working Capital Test and the All-In Cash Picture

The main article already framed the broad picture: Tigbur kept growing, but operating leverage remained modest. This follow-up isolates the narrower question the headline does not answer on its own: how much of Tigbur’s liquidity is truly free cash, and how much depends on a large receivables book, financial assets, and short-term credit lines.

The good news is that this is not a credit-stress story. The company ended 2025 with NIS 205.7 million of equity, a 38.9% equity-to-assets ratio, total credit facilities of NIS 230 million, and very comfortable covenant headroom. The less comfortable part is that the cash left after real cash uses is much tighter than the headline phrase “net financial debt of NIS 15.8 million” suggests. Cash itself stood at only NIS 14.3 million, against NIS 92.1 million of short-term bank credit and NIS 25.6 million of lease liabilities.

That is where two different languages begin to diverge. In the balance-sheet and presentation language, net financial debt is indeed low, because the company nets bank debt not only against cash but also against NIS 62.0 million of financial assets. In actual cash language, NIS 44.1 million of cash flow from operations was almost entirely absorbed by leases, CAPEX, and dividends, leaving only about NIS 0.7 million before the build in short-term deposits. So the right question here is not whether Tigbur is “levered” in the abstract. It is where the company’s funding flexibility actually sits.

Four points matter immediately:

• First finding: there is a gap inside the working-capital disclosure itself. The narrative sentence refers to roughly NIS 99.2 million of working capital, but the table in the same section, and the later liquidity table, point to NIS 86.6 million.
• Second finding: even on the more conservative figure, positive working capital does not mean abundant cash. Receivables of NIS 280.6 million account for 71.3% of current assets.
• Third finding: cash flow from operations of NIS 44.1 million was almost fully absorbed by lease cash, CAPEX, and dividends.
• Fourth finding: the drop in doubtful-debt provision, from NIS 9.5 million to NIS 4.8 million, looks positive, but it also includes NIS 5.34 million of write-offs, not only better collection.

Where Working Capital Actually Sits

The easy way to read Tigbur is to glance at a 1.28 current ratio and positive working capital, then move on. That is incomplete. There is already a small but meaningful numerical tension inside section 1.29.2 itself: the narrative refers to about NIS 99.2 million, but the table directly below it points to NIS 86.6 million, and that is also the figure that appears again in the later liquidity discussion. For cash analysis, the detailed table is the better anchor because it also reconciles with NIS 393.5 million of current assets against NIS 306.9 million of current liabilities.

Even NIS 86.6 million is not a figure that should be read as spare cash. Year-end receivables stood at NIS 280.6 million, almost 3.7 times the total of cash and financial assets shown in the presentation, and 71.3% of all current assets. That is the point where the reading needs to change. Tigbur’s working capital is positive, but its center of gravity is clearly customer credit, not cash.

Management gives two important hints about the quality of that book. First, average customer credit days stand at 67.9, with average customer credit volume of NIS 280.6 million. Second, the company explicitly says there is no material difference between the credit terms it gives public-sector and private-sector customers. In other words, the weight in working capital is not a one-off caused by a troubled account or a temporary billing anomaly. It is part of the structure of the business.

The presentation adds another important layer: receivables are described as mainly tied to government ministries and institutional customers. That helps explain why classic default risk looks relatively limited. But it is not a story of easy cash. If anything, it means growth still has to be funded even when the customers themselves are strong counterparties. For Tigbur, the key issue is not only who the customer is. It is who funds the time lag until payment arrives.

It is also important not to read the asset side in isolation. On the liability side, the company carries NIS 180.9 million of accrued liabilities and other payables, including NIS 109.3 million of payroll-related obligations and another NIS 42.5 million of vacation provision. In plain terms, the model does benefit from natural operating funding through wage-related liabilities. Tigbur is not financing the entire receivables book from cash or bank debt alone. Part of the burden is absorbed inside the company’s operating-liability structure.

That is why the right working-capital read is not binary. This is neither a “strong working capital” story nor a “loss of control” story. It is a model where receivables are heavy, operating liabilities are heavy too, and the balance between them determines whether growth remains manageable or becomes a machine that keeps asking for more short-term funding.

Cash Flow Is Positive, But It Is Already Mostly Spoken For

The first thing that can mislead investors here is that operating cash flow actually looks decent. It came in at NIS 44.1 million, above net profit of NIS 40.2 million. At the entry point into the cash-flow statement, 2025 does not look like a year in which profit stayed entirely on paper.

But the mechanics underneath are more complicated. Receivables alone consumed NIS 31.1 million. The offset came from other moving parts: net income-tax balances added NIS 22.3 million, accrued liabilities and other payables added NIS 13.2 million, and suppliers added another NIS 3.0 million. Put differently, cash flow did not hold because the receivables book was light. It held because the business also leaned on counter-moves in liabilities and taxes.

The framing matters here. The right frame in this continuation is all-in cash flexibility. This is not a normalized recurring-cash view before discretionary uses. It is a test of what remains after actual cash uses. That is the correct frame for Tigbur because the issue here is funding flexibility, not just earnings quality.

On that basis, NIS 44.1 million of operating cash leaves very little room. After NIS 17.6 million of lease cash outflow, NIS 6.8 million of property, plant, and equipment purchases, and NIS 19.0 million of dividends, only about NIS 0.7 million remains. That is the core point. As long as the lens stays on EBITDA or net profit, the picture looks easier. Once the lens moves to actual cash uses, the breathing room almost disappears.

And if the NIS 11.9 million investment in short-term deposits is added, the picture flips. Before new short-term bank borrowing and before a few smaller items, the bridge already shows a gap of about NIS 11.2 million. That does not mean the deposits “disappeared.” They still sit inside the company’s liquidity base. But it does mean that the low-net-debt argument rests on financial assets and liquid-portfolio management, not on a deep operating cash buffer.

This is also where management’s framing needs to be read carefully. Net financial debt of NIS 15.8 million is not a misleading figure. It simply measures something different. It subtracts from NIS 92.1 million of bank borrowing not only NIS 14.3 million of cash and cash equivalents, but also NIS 62.0 million of financial assets. That is a legitimate broad-leverage definition. It is not the same question as how much free cash is left after leases, dividends, and CAPEX.

So the correct 2025 read is deliberately two-layered. On one hand, there is no sign of a near-term squeeze. The company even finished the year with a NIS 1.4 million rise in cash and cash equivalents. On the other hand, that rise came through a net increase of NIS 16.5 million in short-term bank credit. Tigbur enters 2026 with flexibility, but not with surplus cash that makes the issue disappear.

Receivables Quality Improved, But Not Only Through Collection

There is real good news inside the receivables book as well. 91.2% of sales are concentrated in 9 major customers in the staffing and nursing segment, but aging quality does look better than a year earlier. Balances overdue by more than 90 days fell to NIS 4.7 million from NIS 13.0 million, and doubtful-debt provision fell to NIS 4.8 million from NIS 9.5 million. On first read, that looks like a sharp improvement in credit quality.

But this is another place where a surface read is not enough. The movement table for the allowance shows that only NIS 0.58 million was added during 2025, while NIS 5.34 million was written off. In other words, the reduction in the allowance did not come only from the book becoming cleaner. A meaningful part of it came from active write-offs.

That is not automatically negative. Sometimes write-offs are exactly what a company should do to clean an old book and improve transparency. But for cash-quality analysis, the implication is straightforward: the lower provision should not be read as if all of the improvement came from smoother collection. Part of it came from acknowledging that some balances would not be collected.

So the picture is more nuanced than the headline suggests. On one hand, over-90-day aging genuinely improved. On the other hand, the lower provision also carries an element of accounting cleanup. For investors, that means the book looks healthier, but the question of how quickly receivables really turn into cash is still not fully closed.

Funding Flexibility Exists, But It Sits In The Facilities

If there is a real safety layer in Tigbur, it does not sit in the cash balance. It sits in facilities and covenants. At year-end 2025, total bank facilities stood at NIS 230 million, including NIS 175 million of cash facilities and NIS 55 million of guarantee lines. Out of that total, NIS 137 million was utilized, NIS 92 million as financial credit and NIS 45 million as guarantees. That leaves about NIS 83 million of room in the cash line and another NIS 10 million in the guarantee line.

Covenants are also far from pressure. Equity stands at NIS 205.7 million against a minimum requirement of NIS 40 million. Equity to total assets is 38.9% against a minimum of 20%. And the third test, the ratio between solo receivables and solo net financial debt, is described as a case where cash exceeds debt. That is a very wide margin against the 135% requirement.

Management also says, in its liquidity-risk policy, that it aims to hold enough cash or suitable credit lines to cover at least 180 days, and that as of the balance-sheet date it expects to have sufficient liquid sources to meet all obligations. Together with the contractual-maturity table, that supports the conclusion that 2026 does not begin from fear of an immediate financing event.

But that is still not a reason to blur the real structure of the flexibility. That flexibility rests on three pillars: a large receivables book against relatively strong counterparties, liquid financial assets, and short-term credit lines that are still comfortably away from full utilization. That is a better setup than a standalone cash balance of NIS 14.3 million would suggest. It is also more sensitive to what happens between collection discipline, dividend policy, and the decision to keep financial assets alongside short-term bank debt.

Bottom Line

Tigbur exits 2025 with room to operate, but not with excess cash. Working capital is positive and covenants are comfortable, yet very little free cash is left after the year’s actual uses. So the right read is not simply “net debt is low.” It is a company whose flexibility depends on the combination of collection, financial assets, and bank facilities.

The fair counter-thesis is that this combination is enough. One can argue that this is exactly what revolving facilities are for, and that as long as customers remain mainly government ministries and institutional accounts, the receivables book does not deserve a distressed reading. That is a real point. But it still does not remove the key question, whether 2026 operating cash flow can cover leases, CAPEX, and dividends without another step-up in short-term bank borrowing.

The line that matters most is simple: for Tigbur, 2026 will not be judged only through revenue growth or the nursing tender. It will also be judged through the quality of profit-to-cash conversion, dividend discipline, and whether short-term bank credit remains a flexible tool or once again becomes the balancing item that holds the whole picture together.