GE Current, a Daintree company, is in the lead to either acquire Edison Price Lighting or to acquire the assets of Edison Price Lighting. The deadline to bid is 9 OCT 2020 at 4:00 pm with a potential auction on 11 OCT. Emma Price explained to me, “When you are in Chapter 11, everything has to be approved by the Judge, and until that happens, nothing happens.”
Your humble editor has spoken to sources within Edison Price (not Emma Price) as well as GE Current and here is what we learned:
- GE Current wants the business for a simple reason. Our source explained, “We are interested in Edison Price because of their great product to augment our expanding portfolio.”
- The interest has only been from private equity, and if you think about it, GE Current is run by private equity.
- GE Current has had a team of people inside EPL for approximately four weeks conducting due diligence. No other potential bidder has done nearly the amount of due diligence as GE has.
- One of the big issues with EPL’s bankruptcy is the simple cost of doing business in New York, from labor to rent–the cost is exorbitant and if GE Current is the winning bidder, manufacturing will likely move away from New York–but stay in the U.S.
- Edison Price only has a skeleton crew working now, about 25 people, and most of the employees are in manufacturing. Almost all of the sales people, product development, planning team, and manufacturing engineers are gone.
- Our GE Current source stated that the court will look at the best and highest bidder and he emphasized the word ‘best’. If GE Current is at $1.1 M and another company bids $1.2M, the court may still give it to GE Current as they may be the ‘best’ company capable of carrying out the actual purchase.
The Sale Hearing Date is set for 14 October @ 10:00 a.m. (ET)
Read the details here.