Photo Credit: Clay Banks
Last summer, Alliance Entertainment announced plans to execute a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger. Now, despite the SPAC sector’s relative collapse, the deal has officially wrapped.
Alliance Entertainment, which bills itself as “the largest wholesale distributor of home entertainment audio and video software in the United States,” just recently completed its merger with the Adara Acquisition Corp. The transaction values Sunrise, Florida-based Alliance at approximately $480 million, though the price of the post-merger entity’s shares (OTC: ADRA) was down substantially at the time of this writing.
Building upon the latter, the NYSE American revealed on Friday that it had “determined to commence proceedings to delist” Adara because it had “failed to satisfy the requirements for initial listing following a business combination.” But Alliance has emphasized that it “intends to seek to list on the Nasdaq Capital Market as soon as practicable.”
In any event, Alliance says that it stocks north of 485,000 “unique entertainment products,” items from each of the major labels among them, and is the “exclusive distributor” of approximately 57,300 vinyl, CD, DVD, and video-game products. Additionally, the decades-old business owns indie distributor Amped (which says that it counts as clients Believe, Exceleration, and Reservoir, to name some) and operates online retail platforms such as Deep Discount and Import CDs.
As disclosed last summer, the GameFly owner Alliance is expected to retain its existing management team, with Bruce Ogilvie staying on as chairman and Jeff Walker continuing to serve as CEO of the combined business.
Predictably, the cash-flush operation is now positioned to invest “in growth including automating facilities” and upgrading proprietary technology, higher-ups indicated. Furthermore, execs made clear that Alliance can likewise pursue “inorganic growth through a roll-up strategy of acquiring and integrating competitors.”
Ogilvie drove home the SPAC merger’s acquisition-related byproducts, communicating in part: “Moreover, this business combination will further enable our significant focus on a strategic roll-up strategy of acquiring and integrating competitors and complementary businesses which we believe will drive an accelerated competitive position and value creation.”
Regarding the initially noted SPAC collapse, both The Music Acquisition Corp. and Liberty Media’s SPAC shut down with zero acquisitions in 2022.
Also in 2022, after Pershing Square’s since-dissolved SPAC abruptly dropped a deal to buy 10 percent of Universal Music in 2021, special purpose acquisition company mergers involving SeatGeek and Triller failed to close.
That said, certain SPAC mergers – the most notable being Deezer’s combination with I2PO SA and Anghami’s union with the Vistas Media Acquisition Company – did wrap last year, and the aforementioned Triller is still acquiring companies in spite of obstacles including licensing lawsuits from UMG and others.