Lightyear is on the M&A trail again. This time the CLEC is snapping up the assets of Kentucky-based SouthEast Telephone Inc., adding 33,000 rural customers to its fold.
Through this deal, Lightyear will acquire all of SouthEast's assets, including its intellectual property and vendor contracts with a mix of cash, stock and debt. When broken down, Lightyear will pay up to $560,000 in cash in addition to $4,000 for each employee it does not hire and issue an aggregate of 200,000 shares of Company common stock valued $0.001 per share. In addition, Lightyear will take on $3.8 million plus $2 million for working capital and network expansion.
Of course, Lightyear has to get the get the bankruptcy court's blessing for the deal, which will be presented in a hearing on July 16. However, Sherman Henderson, Chairman and CEO of Lightyear, is confident that there won't be any issues.
"If there are any obstacles, I would be surprised, but you can't tell in bankruptcy until you get there," Henderson said in an xchange article.
If the deal is approved, Henderson believes he'll get the opportunity to upsell SouthEast's landline customers with its larger portfolio of integrated communications services. "This is a real opportunity to take our...products to that marketplace," said Henderson. "The customers in rural America are very loyal to a company like SouthEast and we believe that will continue."
Expected to close in October, this is the second acquisition Lightyear made this year following the completion of its reverse merger with Libra Alliance Corp., a shell corporation and former ISP in February.
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