Franklin Electronic Publishers goes private

Feb 26, 2010

The publicly traded chapter of Franklin Electronic Publishers Inc.’s existence appears to have ended.

The Burlington, N.J., company filed a Form 15 with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday. That’s the form a company uses to terminate the registration of its stock or suspend its requirement to file reports with the agency.

The two rules Franklin relied upon to file the form allow a company to take those actions if it has fewer than 300 shareholders or fewer than 500 shareholders and assets of $10 million or less.

Franklin said in the form it has 10 shareholders, an indication that the proposal by a management-led group to take the company private was approved at the special stockholders’ meeting that Franklin held Wednesday.

Franklin has decided not to put out a press release confirming that the buyout was approved, a company spokeswoman said.

The buyout became all but certain earlier this month when Franklin and the management-led group, Saunders Acquisition Corp., settled with shareholders trying to block the deal under which Saunders was to take Franklin private for $2.50 per share.

The total value of the deal looked to be nearly $14.7 million, because Saunders also was going to pay $1.13 per share to the holders of options to buy a little more than 511,000 shares of Franklin’s stock, according to earlier SEC filings by Franklin.

Franklin publishes electronic books and licenses language software. In the first three quarters of its current fiscal year, which were the last three quarters of 2009, it earned $970,000 on revenue of $35.1 million. As of June 15, it employed 133 people, including 57 in the United States, according to its most recent annual report with the SEC, which it filed June 29.