FTE Networks Inc (fka FTNW)

[Ed Ajootian]

The new contracts support the combined nine-month backlog of $261MM that FTE and Benchmark had as of April 20, 2017.

This sentence in the PR clearly says that this is not really new business but rather is just a validation of business that they had included in a previously disclosed "backlog" figure for sales this year, post-closing. Not sure how they are defining "backlog" -- I think most folks would say you only include something in "backlog" if you have a contract in hand to do the work.

It thus looks like these guys are playing fast & loose with their use of the term "backlog". Hopefully all this crap is water under the bridge once they start putting out real quarterly numbers for the merged enterprise, in a couple of months.