Morning Roundup: November 10, 2023

At the SPAC of Dawn

Good morning! Watch this space moving forward as a roundup of evening filings as well as news nuggets to nibble on beside your morning coffee.

After a Halloween massacre that saw four SPAC deals get terminated in about 24 hours, we presaged that the bloodletting of long-running deals might continue into November. So far, it has.

Yesterday two more deals went down as Blockchain Coinvestors (NASDAQ:BCSA) canceled a deal with Qenta and Arogo (NASDAQ:AOGO) threw in the towel on its EON reality deal. Both were transactions in sectors that appear to have far less buzz today than when they were struck.

Qenta is attempting to create a physical gold-backed crypto currency and fintech platform, while EON provides metaverse-based training programs.

The deals had each been pending for a year or more, which continues to be the state for a large portion of SPACs with announced deals. As of November 1, the median time since announcement for such SPACs had already grown to 7.3 months.

One more SPAC, Healthwell I (NASDAQ:HWEL) terminated its deal with Starton Therapeutics on Monday after a shorter campaign, having announced it initially in late April. This still brings the 10-day total to seven terminations.

News and Rumors

• PR: Space venture Momentus (NASDAQ:MNTS) closed a sale of 2,904,269 warrants for about $6.5 million two years out from closing its combination with Stable Road. The warrants can be exercised to receive 5,808,538 shares at $2 per share.
• The Messenger: SoftBank Group reported a loss of $1.55 billion in its second quarter on Thursday after taking a significant hit from WeWork’s (NYSE:WE), which combined with BowX in 2021, bankruptcy filing earlier this week.
• PR: IoT company KORE (NYSE:KORE) announced a $150 million strategic investment from Searchlight Capital Partners that will reduce its leverage to 5.3x EBITDA from 7.3x. The company combined with Cerberus Telecom in 2021.
• GasWorld: New Era Helium Corp., which announced the signing of a non-binding LOI for a proposed business combination with Accretion Acquisition (NASDAQ:ENER), is one step closer to production at its Pecos Slope helium plant, having announced the signing of two new agreements with Keyes Helium Company and Badger Midstream Energy.
• Venture Beat: Skillz (NYSE:SKLZ) told a federal court on Monday that a federal grand jury was seeking access to information on AviaGames and its top executives in relation to Skillz’ allegations about defrauding players in skill-based games. Skillz completed its combination with Flying Eagle Acquisition Corp. in mid-December 2020.