Good morning!

If you are receiving this newsletter for the first time, welcome! You will find the Weekly SPAC Review in the first section below followed by an update on Friday’s SPAC activity.

While Friday's update is included in this Weekly newsletter, the other daily updates (covering Mon-Thurs) are sent in our SPAC Morning Update newsletter to ListingTrack Pro users on the morning of each trading day.

Weekly SPAC Review (Sep 30-Oct 4)

Headlines of the Week

De-SPAC M&A

• 23andMe ($ME) is no longer open to considering third-party takeover proposals as the CEO, Anne Wojcicki, stated the best path forward is for her to take the company private. — Reuters

• Desktop Metal ($DM) shareholders approved the acquisition by Nano Dimension ($NNDM). Closing is expected in Q4 pending regulatory approvals. — PR

Other De-SPAC News

• Struggling Rental Company Sonder ($SOND) Tries to Dodge WeWork Plight — WSJ

• AST SpaceMobile ($ASTS) announced that 99.89% of its public warrants were exercised for cash in connection with its Sep 27 redemption date. The public warrants were delisted. — PR

• Activist investor Irenic Capital Management has built up an 8.1% stake in Reservoir Media ($RSVR) and urged the company to launch a strategic review of alternatives to maximize shareholder value and for its Board to form a special committee to oversee the review. — SF

• Mobix Labs ($MOBX) submitted a non-binding proposal to acquire EMCORE ($EMKR) for $3.80 per share in cash or an appx. total market value of $34.5M. Mobix reported only $205,000 in cash and issued a going concern warning on its latest quarterly report. — PR

• Trump Media COO quits; DJT ($DJT) turns over more shares to SPAC investor in court fight — CNBC

• Sable Offshore Corp. ($SOC) announced it will redeem its public warrants. SOC set the deadline to exercise its public warrants, at $11.50 per share, for Oct 31. — PR

• EchoStar Group ($SATS), controlled by Charlie Ergen, agreed to sell DISH DBS, which includes DISH and Sling TV, to DIRECTV for the assumption of $9.75 billion of debt. — PR

  • TPG will also buy out AT&T’s 70% stake in DIRECTV (which is co-owned by AT&T and TPG) for $7.6 billion in cash payments.

  • Per the EchoStar release, DISH's divestment will allow the company to focus on its wireless service business, Boost Mobile (and Hughesnet—though not mentioned), and use its satellite assets and experience to develop direct-to-device solutions.

  • CONX (OTC: $CNXX), another Charlie Ergen holding company, is purchasing 1.551M EchoStar shares for an aggregate price of $43.5M in a PIPE that will raise appx. $400M for the company in connection with the closing of the DISH divestment.

SPAC Coverage*

• Metal Sky Acquisition Corp [$MSSA] entered into a non-binding LOI with Okidoki, "one of Estonia's largest and most popular" Estonian classifieds platforms. – PR

• Invest India ($IVCA) submitted a non-binding proposal for a merger to Bigtincan (ASX: BTH, OTC: BTGHF), a sales enablement software company listed on the ASX. — SF

• Everest Consolidator Acquisition Corp ($MNTN), which initially disputed the validity of the termination notice it received from Unifund Financial Technologies last week, reported that the termination is now effective. — SF

• SDCL EDGE Acquisition Corporation ($SEDA) terminated its merger with cunova and KME Aerospace in July. The parties were in talks but have abandoned the efforts to sign a new deal. — SF

_{*Covering the notable activity not included in the section below}

Key Weekly SPAC Activity

Deal Announcements/ Terminations/ Closings

See more: SPAC Deal Pipeline

• Mergers announced:

  • Iron Horse ($IROH) & event ticketing platform, Zhong Guo Liang Tou Group Limited, d/b/a China Food Investment at a $479M Pre-money equity value (assuming 100% redemption) — PR / IP / BCA

• Terminations:

  • Blockchain Coinvestors Acquisition Corp. I ($BCSA) & Linqto – PR

• Completions:

  • Baird Medical ($BDMD, -28% from SPAC IPO) & ExcelFin (XFIN)

  • Innventure ($INV, +27% from SPAC IPO) & Learn CW Investment (LCW)

Merger Votes

See more: Merger Votes Calendar

• Merger votes set:

  • TMT ($TMTC) & eLong Power: Oct 29. — SF

• Deals in limbo — merger approved & pending closing:

  • Nova Vision [$NOVV] & Real Messenger

  • Focus Impact [$FIAC] & DevvStream

Extensions

See more: Extension Votes Calendar

• Approvals:

  • $TBMC: Sep 2025, $TMTC: Dec 2024, $OAKU: Mar 2025, $HCVI: June 2025, $SKGR: Mar 2025

• Votes set:

  • $LATG, $NPAB, $PORT

IPOs and New S-1s

See more: IPO Calendar & Pre-IPO Dataset

• No new IPOs

• 5 new registrations

  • Oaktree III Life Sciences (OACC) — S-1

  • Willow Lane Acq Corp (WLAC) — S-1

  • Ocean Capital Acq Corp (OCAC) — S-1

  • A SPAC III Acq Corp (ASPC) — S-1

  • Aldel Financial II (ALDF) — S-1

Liquidations

See more: Liquidations Dataset

• Liquidations Announced

  • Viveon Health (VHAQ): the last trading day was expected to be Oct 4.

• 40 SPACs have liquidated in 2024, while 1 is in the process of liquidating.

Current Stats:

See more: SPAC Stats

Friday’s SPAC Update

The section below is the format for the SPAC Morning Update newsletter sent to ListingTrack Pro subscribers on the morning of each trading day. You can sign up for ListingTrack Pro here.

SPAC & De-SPAC Daily Trading (prev. session)

SPAC Gainers & Losers

SPAC Volume Leaders

De-SPAC Gainers & Losers

De-SPACs listed from 2019- in descending order with the 3 Gainers followed by the 3 Losers

SPAC Updates

Liquidations / Terminations

• Viveon Health Acquisition Corp. ($VHAQ) announced it will liquidate, with an effective date of Sep 30. Pending appx. redemption price. VHAQ was in a BCA with Clearday. — SF

Deal Updates

• Mars Acquisition Corp. ($MARX) & ScanTech Identification Beam Systems amended the BCA to increase the merger consideration from $110M to $140M, add a bonus share incentive (2 bonus shares per 1 share held), and extend the outside date to Nov 15. — SF

Listings

New Issues: IPOs, New S-1s

Filings

• Oaktree Acquisition Corp. III Life Sciences — S-1

  • $175M, 1/5 Warrant

  • Focus: Healthcare

  • UWs: Jefferies, Citigroup, UBS

Listing Warnings / Transfers:

• NorthView Acquisition Corp ($NVAC): amendment to non-compliance warning report. — SF

• Alpha Star Acquisition Corp. ($ALSA): non-compliance warning. — SF 

Key Filings

Extensions:

• Integral Acquisition Corporation 1 ($INTE) — DEF

• Perception Capital Corp. IV ($RCFA) — PRE

S-4 Filings*:

• Roth CH V Holdings, Inc. ($ROCL) & New Era Helium — S-4/A

• Bowen Acquisition Corp ($BOWN) & Shenzhen Qianzhi BioTech — S-4/A

*The latest S-4 filings can be found in the Announced Mergers dataset.

Key Event Calendar:

See the full calendar: SPAC Calendar