SodaStream Workers to Get NIS 18K Bonus After Sale

In a letter to SodaStream workers, company CEO Daniel Birnbaum wrote that the company wished to share its good fortune with workers – and was awarding every worker NIS 18,000 ($5,000) as a bonus, after the company’s $3.2 billion sale to PepsiCo.

“It was an amazing week,” Birnbaum wrote in an email to employees, Yediot Acharonot reported, and he was especially touched by the pride SodaStream workers showed in being part of one of the biggest business deals in Israeli history. “We have some of the best people in the world,” he wrote – and they deserved to be rewarded.

The NIS 18,000 bonus will go to all workers with at least one year of work at the company, regardless of how many years they have been on the job. Workers with less than a year’s experience will receive a sum equivalent to two and a half times their monthly salary. According to company figures from 2017, SodaStream employs 2,592 people, 1,875 of them in Israel. The bonus will cost the company NIS 46.6 million.

International beverage monolith PepsiCo announced last week that it would be buying Israel’s SodaStream for a toal of $3.2 billion. In the deal, PepsiCo will pay $144 per share of outstanding SodaStream stock, a 32-percent premium over its average price in recent months.