BigBand (Nasdaq: BBND) lands a deal with Charter Communications (Nasdaq: CHTR) for its switched digital video solution. Charter is the fifth operator to initiate commercial deployments of BigBand’s SDV solution. The five largest cable operators in the U.S. have now selected BigBand’s SDV. Check out our recent coverage of BigBand.

Motty Zisser, Elbit Medical’s (Nasdaq: EMITF) head, is already mulling expanding the Budapest Arena Center. The 66,000-square meter mall is Hungary’s largest mall and is fully occupied. The center was sold in August and it looks like Elbit Medical may see a gain of 1 billion NIS on the sale.  See our coverage of Elbit Medical’s strategy here.

Merrill Lynch upgrades Israel cellular provider, Cellcom (NYSE: CEL).  The bank said, “Despite the share price rallying 17% in the past month, we see two reasons to recommend purchase. First, we find a prospective 7.6% dividend yield compelling and, second, we see scope for additional cash returns with current net debt only 1.3 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) and well below management comfort levels of 2.5 times.”

Israel theft-prevention firm, Ituran (NYSE: ITRN), whiffs on earnings by $.03.

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Zack Miller
IsraelNewsletter.com

Globes ran an article on Elbit Systems (ESLT) last week. Company president and CEO Joseph Ackerman spoke about the growth the defense company is seeing. 2008 and beyond seem to be double-digit growth years for the Israeli contractor, with over $4 billion in backlog orders.

The seminal paragraph of the article addresses market demand for Elbit products:

“The budgets of armies around the world have been growing at 3-4% annually in the past few years, and we are growing faster than the market…Our business is military electronics,…there’s always demand for the products. What’s more, today armies buy fewer platforms and more systems, and that’s exactly what we do. Therefore I estimate that in the next three to four years we’ll maintain a two-digit growth rate. 2008 is more or less clear to us, and it will be better than 2007.”

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Zack Miller
www.israelnewsletter.com

ClickSoftware (Nasdaq: CKSW), the Israeli provider of mobile workforce management and service optimization tools, announced on Friday that two energy companies signed deals with the firm to provide “ClickSoftware’s ServiceOptimization Suite to improve work forecasting, resource planning, and scheduling of natural gas and electric transmission and distribution field work crews”.

See IsraelNewsletter’s Aaron Katsman recent coverage of CKSW’s earnings.

Disclosure: Author’s fund has a position in any CKSW as of 11/18/2007.

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Aaron Katsman
IsraelNewsletter.com

With yesterday’s news that Barry Bonds was indicted on perjury charges, I thought it would be appropriate to give an Israeli stock whose YTD performance has been so good, it’s as if they are on steroids. Funny enough, they also happen to be a pharmaceutical company.

Perrigo(PRGO) has surged about 80% YTD. Perrigo is a  leading global healthcare supplier that develops, manufactures and distributes over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription pharmaceuticals, nutritional products, active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and consumer products.  The Company is the world’s largest manufacturer of OTC pharmaceutical products for the store brand market. While it’s not technically an Israeli company, after all the are based in Michigan and have been around for more than 100 years, they do a lot of their development and manufacturing in Israel, and they bought an Israeli Pharma company a few years ago.

The company had a great quarter and raised their outlook. They raised their fiscal ‘08 outlook range to between $1.12 and $1.22 a share. It had earlier forecast earnings of $1.00 to $1.10 per share.

While they don’t produce anything that will make you a home-run champ, they are launching a new heartburn drug. Barry, with all the legal trouble you may want a prescription.

Please see our Disclaimer HERE.

Disclosure: Author has a position in PRGO as of 11/16/07.

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Aaron Katsman is the lead portfolio manager for the Israel Growth Portfolio and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. For more information, go to www.israelnewsletter.com or call 1-888-327-6179, or email aaron@profile-financial.com.

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