Information released in the call indicates that iBill will be holding accounts that no longer produce new sign-ups in reserve for six months and that iBill may have already been acquired by media holding company Care Concepts.
According to David Kugelman, who handles investor relations for Care Concepts, the deal has not yet gone through, but statements made during Wednesday’s call, sent via email to iBill customers and posted on the company’s website seem to suggest otherwise.
During Wednesday’s conference call reference was made to “parent company IBD,” which iBill said now owns 100 percent of the payment processor.
Also announced during the call as a new stock option program that will allow iBill users to obtain Care Concepts common stock at a rate of 150 percent.
Though neither iBill or Care Concepts has announced that the deal has been completed or filed documents indicated the consummation with the SEC, the recent stock offer from iBill to its clients adds to mounting speculation that iBill may now be completely owned by Care Concepts.
Kugelman told XBiz that this was not the case.
“The merger is not complete,” Kugelman said. “They are going to do the deal one way or another before January, but it has not been consummated yet.”
According to the corporate addresses listed on SEC filings, Care Concepts has moved its corporate offices to the iBill building.
Statements issued by iBill and Care Concepts over the past two weeks both also mentioned that each company had named former Private Media President and CEO Charles Prast as the new chief executive officer for the companies.
Prast also maintains an email address at the ibill.com domain.
Care Concepts was forced to put its acquisition on hold in September after trading on its stock on the American Stock Exchange was halted and AMEX officials threatened to delist the company over a variety of public-interest concerns.
While Care Concepts only put a hold on the acquisition until it could get AMEX approval, the company has said that it will go ahead with the purchase by the end of January and seek to have its stock relisted on another exchange if it does not receive approval.
Also announced during the call, iBill revealed that it will consider all accounts without new transactions closed and hold all money in the account for at least six months.
Representatives from iBill were not available for comment.