Yes this certainly big news. Per the 8K & the stock purchase agreement, the consideration that FTE is paying consists of $55M cash and about 18M shares of FTE stock, and the sellers are taking back a $10M note that is convertible into stock at $.475/share. Since the agreement can be terminated by either party after 5/8/17, they think that they can get this closed by that date, which would be quite an achievement if they can pull it off.
FTE has yet to obtain a financing commitment for the $55M, and that stuff takes quite a bit of time, especially the piece of that which will be comprised of acquisition debt. Maybe (hopefully) they are already far along on the due diligence road with somebody on that.
It will be interesting to see how much of the $55M they try to raise with equity, and on what sort of terms.
This transaction answers several questions I have had about these guys. For example, I had been wondering why they did not file a registration statement for the Ladenburg private placement last fall. Obviously, since they were trying to use their stock as currency for a part of the consideration of this transaction, it would not make sense to register the Ladenburg stock while they were negotiating this transaction.
