Hard to figure why the Ladenburg guys are not dumping more of their stock. Maybe they saw in the PR for the Benchmark deal that Stifel Nicholas assisted FTE on the deal, and figured that Stifel will probably be the firm that does the next equity raise for FTE, not Ladenburg. Without being able to participate in the next equity raise, the Ladenburg guys would be less apt to dump their stock since they would have no easy way to buy it back. Yes they could buy it on the open market but as we have seen, this stock is very thinly traded, other than when they put out blockbuster news.
The next tranche of Ladenburg stock that was issued in the private placement does not become free-trading until the 29th. It will be interesting to see when the company decides to put out 4Q numbers and whether they decide to issue guidance on 1Q '17 results in conjunction with that news. I imagine they could wait for the 29th but at this point the 4Q numbers are basically old news so it might be better to just get them out of the way sooner vs. later.
Of course if they haven't finished the audit yet then this is all moot.
