The company issued an 8-k on 11/14 and 12/24 with combined total financing from those is $5 million, enough to close the ESS deal. The Series E shares are restricted for 6 months so the earliest any of those shares can come to market is May.
You can certainly claim dilution is holding the stock back but you can't logically claim that the company needs money to close the ESS deal when they announced the financing deals already.