Wednesday, February 01, 2006

IMPART gets $6M loan for digital signs

If you were IMPART, what would you do with $6 million in working capital? They do build physical kiosk and digital signage enclosures, but probably not $6M worth. They do a lot of large-format outdoor advertising, but $6M can buy a lot of vinyl and printing ink. And then there's their digital signage group... well, $6M would pay for a nice-sized network of screens, and some content to boot. Unfortunately, the press release doesn't give us a lot of insight:

Commenting on the financing, Joe F. Martinez, IMPART Media Group, Inc., Chairman of the Board and Chief Financial Officer, stated, "This transaction is representative of the seminal events we deem necessary to fuel our aggressive expansion into the emerging out-of-home digital advertising sector." Martinez continued, "We believe this transaction will enable IMPART to pursue key strategies to position the company and our products for tremendous acceptance in demographically-rich advertising venues similar to the airport deployments of our iPoint Networks(TM) product line."

The financing consists of a $6,000,000 revolving debt facility at an interest rate of WSJ Prime plus 3.0% subject to a floor of 7% for three (3) years from the date of closing with no financial covenants. In addition Laurus was issued 750,000 nominally priced warrants. Laurus further agreed to a one year lock up on the sale of any shares acquired upon exercise of the warrants, as well as a limitation on the number of shares it may sell during each 22 trading day period to less than or equal to twenty-five percent (25%) of the aggregate dollar trading volume of Impart Media's common stock during such periods. GunnAllen Financial, a full service brokerage and investment banking firm, served in an advisory capacity to IMPART Media Group for this transaction.
So we know that they wanted the cash badly enough to give away 750,000 warrants (nominal cost usually means a penny or even a mil apiece), so what are they going to do with it?

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