FragranceNet.com Election to be Cashed Out
Finally, there has been some news out of FragranceNet.com. I have been waiting for a couple of months now to receive cash for my shares of FragranceNet.com. I did not receive cash today, but I did receive an email from my broker, Firstrade.
The email included an attachment titled, “Election Form – Election to be Cash Out”. This is the first time I’ve received one of these forms for a going private transaction. The form asks for the number of shares that I own, my contact information, and my account information. It seems simple enough. The email from my broker indicates that I need to mail this form in so it will arrive in their office by November 21, 2005. I’ll be putting it in the mail tomorrow.
I’m a bit disappointed by the fact that I probably have to wait until December until I receive any cash, but at least there is finally some progress on this. I am not really surprised by how long this is taking. My guess is that FragranceNet.com is a bit tight on cash right now after having built up their inventory for the holiday shopping season. It looks like they could be trying to stall until after Thanksgiving in order to have sufficient cash flow from holiday gift sales in order to cash out shareholders. I hope their sales do well over the next couple of weeks, so I can finally have cash in hand for the next deal.
I bought shares in two separate accounts with Fidelity. Yesterday, I received the election forms, but they came in two separate DHL packages! It basically says that I have to sign the form to elect the cash payout and send them back to them by November 21. If they don’t receive them by that day, I will forfeit my right to receive the cash payout and will recieve shares instead. I think Fragrance.com is setting up another hoop for you to jump through to save some money. I am sure there will be a certain percentage of people don’t return the form in time and miss the payout. What’s intersting is that they actually included DHL envelops with prepaid labels for me to send back the signed forms. How much more costs they’d incur by doing this? At least some brokerage is handling it in a sensible way by using e-mails.