[Logan]

Thank you Investor_2022.

I really can’t predict the timeline of the events especially now with COVID-19 pandemic.

If all went well, Lycos case with Daum would’ve been settled by early March this year. Mr Reddy was supposed to travel to South Korea and close that off.

South Korea was hard hit by the virus in February and early March so he didn’t go there. I’m not sure whether it’s safe for him to travel there now also.

These days the company is updating us regularly through the exchanges.We should appreciate that.

May be we’ll get a clarity from the CEO in the conference call after the results.

[Logan]

Since they do most of their business in the US, they are consolidating all their subsidiaries and forming a new entity there.

I checked some of their publishers and most of them are in the US, the banks will know about their business and this helps them get funds easily.

In my opinion if they don’t consolidate their subsidiaries then some of them might find it hard to raise fund in their respective countries.

Suppose if the interest rate is 1% in the US and 5% in Canada and if they raise cash in the US they can’t send it to Canada directly, they’ll have show it as income which will be subjected to tax. Since they are spread out in 24 countries, each and every country will have different rates and different rules on raising funds.

So taking all this into consideration, consolidation of the subsidiaries make sense.

[Logan]

Hi Nithin, that’s a good observation. The company tried to raise money back in 2017 from White Oak. The amount was $150 million (around 1000 crores).

I don’t know whether it was debt or equity, but it would’ve helped the company in many ways. First they could’ve settled Lycos case with Daum then they could’ve used the remaining amount for growth and to sort out receivable issues.

When Daum got to know about this, they dragged White Oak to the court and subpoenaed them to reveal the details. Since White Oak wasn’t involved in the operations of the company, they backed off. Nobody wants to get involved in a legal case. This also made other potential investors to back off.

I think this made the company to give up hopes on Lycos and they lost the ownership.

And regarding your other question on why now and not earlier, my guess is that since they are spread all over the globe and different countries will have different rules and regulations, it would be hard for them to manage all those processes.

They must have tried many options and concluded consolidating all the subsidiaries would be the best option, and they didn’t rush it and may be this took time.

[Author]

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