Seems like they just accelerated an ongoing royalty payment into a one-time upfront cash payment. The amount should be revealed when they release earnings. Since the company needed near term cash, this was likely a smart move even thought it meant giving up some value on the back end. We don't have the luxury at this point of waiting to collect quarterly royalty checks. But hopefully someday the business will be stable enough whereby these installment payments will provide consistent money (and enable meaningful guidance) on a quarter-by-quarter basis.
IMO, the reason for the release likely had to do with the fact that the amount they received was material to the company, which by definition requires public disclosure. The part of the definition I'm not familiar with is what is considered material? Can anyone ballpark what amount of cash (given Marathon's current state) would be necessary to make this disclosure necessary? I think I remember hearing something like receiving anything over 10% of current cash needs to be publicly disclosed but please do not quote me on that as I'm sure it's more confusing than that and may be completely wrong.
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