LONDON (Alliance News) - e-Therapeutics PLC Wednesday said it plans to buy Searchbolt Ltd, an internet search engine technology that de-merged from e-Therapeutics when it floated in 2007, for GBP2.3 million.
The company said it believes it is essential to secure ownership over all of its intellectual property through the acquisition of Searchbolt as it works on commercialising and validating its drug discovery platform.
Back when Searchbolt was split off from the e-Therapeutics it was granted an exclusive, perpetual royalty fee licence to intellectual property to exploit e-Therapeutics core technology in relation to internet search engine technology. By buying Searchbolt e-Therapeutics will ensure it has full control of the rights to defence its intellectual property.
e-Therapeutics will pay an initial GBP1.8 million in cash, as well as a retained consideration of around GBP563,000 in cash, payable in cash when Searchbolt receives debts owed to it by some third parties.
Searchbolt shareholders may elect to receive some of the initial consideration and around GBP421,280 of the retained consideration through the allotment and issue of consideration shares at a price of 14.55 pence.
Shares in e-Therapeutics were untraded Wednesday morning. They last closed at 14.00 pence.
Both e-Therapeutics Chief Executive Officer Malcolm Young and Executive Director Sean Nicolson are shareholders of Searchbolt, and Young is also a director of Searchbolt, meaning that under AIM rules the acquisition is considered a related party transaction. Both have opted to receive shares in respect to that part of the consideration payable to them.
e-Therapeutics noted that neither Young nor Nicolson took part in the board's consideration of the acquisition.
"Our drug discovery platform continues to exceed our expectations by generating many high quality, potent compounds. We are focused on demonstrating the value of our approach. As we head towards the commercialisation of our assets it is essential to have complete control of all the intellectual property that protects our core processes," said Chairman Iain Ross in a statement.
"This acquisition reunifies e-Therapeutics with full control over our patent estate and we believe that the value of protecting our technology will become increasingly apparent," Ross added.
By Hana Stewart-Smith; hanassmith@alliancenews.com; @HanaSSAllNews
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