We had been very firm with the view that we were long-term dedicated to the SPAC market, that we’ve been in this market for a long time. We have a team that has been doing SPACs since — as early as 2005, ’06, ’07 time period. And that regardless of SPAC market, whether it’s booming like it did in 2020 or whether it’s bust like it did over the last year or two and like it did previous to 2020, it’s really not, in our view, a bust of the SPAC market, it’s really like a return to the normal. And I’m actually quite happy that we had this boom so that it brought awareness and understanding of SPACs. Now we’ve had a bust so that now a lot of the participants that should not have been in SPACs have kind of been fleshed out. We think that we are — we have a very experienced team in SPACs just from the actual knowledge of how to get a SPAC transaction done.
We think we have a great team from the perspective of getting — due diligencing and really working hard to find the right transaction to do. And then we also think we have some really good experience with people like Joe Moglia and Larry and myself that can sort of guide our team to what we think is the right type of transaction for us to do and build a franchise around FG as a SPAC company. I think we’ve done a good job with that. What’s really neat about the iCore transaction, one, is that we got a deal done in a very difficult environment; but two, is how we did it. And this was a company that wanted to raise capital, wanted to uplist to the NASDAQ. And we helped them raise capital. We helped them do so in a very innovative way. We went to the marketplace and understood what capital might be available.
And then we structured a transaction with them where we have convertible preferred that has a ratchet feature down that, essentially, our conversion feature goes lower down to, I believe, low as $2 per share if — in the event that we decide to convert. But we are protected with the preferred principles. So it’s a really nice feature that we built into that for investors. And we — rather than just giving it to us, we made it available to anyone who invested in the IPO of the SPAC. So I think it was a really innovative structure. I’m proud of our team for the way they innovated, and I’m very happy that the capital markets were supportive of it. I’m thankful to the investors that we’ve had that continue to support us. So I think that all in all, it worked out to be a good transaction.
I think iCore now needs to execute on their business model that they laid out in terms of executing on that pipeline of potential software deals. And if they do that, I think that they’ll be successful. So I think it’s — we are not on the Board anymore. We are not management. We are getting them sort of do what they need to do. We got our job done, and now it’s their turn to execute. So hopefully, the management team and Board executes.
Bill Brewster: Okay. And just one follow-up. To the extent that it’s — FG’s capital at risk and there’s a vested interest in the outcome, are you thinking about this as the preferred is likely covered in most scenarios and then the conversion to common is the upside? Like is that how you think about protecting your own capital? Or am I misreading that?
Kyle Cerminara: I think that we certainly view it as though we have more downside protection, a lot more downside protection than you would normally have in that if the stock price falls, which it has, but it also rallied. It’s been all over the place. So there’s not a whole lot of public float so the stock has been everywhere, that we have downside protection in the preferred and we also have downside protection in the conversion feature. But if we have significant upside like we did, it can really be material. So I think we’re very happy with that structure of — and by the way, that structure is consistent with the way we try and do everything. We try and do everything with protect the downside, preserve the upside, protect the downside, preserve the upside, protect the downside — we do that again and again and again.
Every time we do a deal, protect the downside, preserve the upside. Sometimes it’s not perfect, but that’s our goal on every transaction. But it’s not always going to be foolproof.
Bill Brewster: Yes. Well, that’s risk. Right. But — all right, cool. Appreciate your thoughts and I hope you all have a good day.
Kyle Cerminara: Yes, thank you.
Operator: Thank you. As we have no further questions in queue, I will turn the call back to management for closing remarks.
