RE: for all the trashing of JEC on this board... Robert, find me an acquisition of a publicly traded company that this does not happen to....unavoidable IMO. That is what Fully diluted share count is all about. Management that were issued options as part of compensation and founders that have a large share holding at times, will be able to have a long awaited liquidity event. That is why enterprise value is calculated using FD share base. On the point of a third of the purchase price being with shares, this to is very common unless you are Apple or Oracle systems etc. Check out the purchase of Petro Canada by Suncor Energy over 3 years ago. This combined company is Canada's largest energy company with a combined Enterprise value of over $50 billion. Sunor issued a considerable number of shares in addition to debt to purchase Petrocanada. I was a trasher of JEC because IMO they were out for a flip trade and did not want to go through the transaction because they did not want to be a holder of a company that is acquiring another but just the opposite. When they got wind that Ithaca was buying Valiant, they went public as a dissident shareholder in opposition to the transaction but their motive was not in the best interests of the shareholder base in general but rather their own agenda so they began the scare campaign even indicating that Ithaca was using a costly bridge loan when in fact it was extremely well negotiated and very low cost of money. A major blue ship could not borrow better. One has to look at the value or accretiveness on a per share basis and on all metrics the deal is very highly accretive in this light. Ithaca shares are udervalued but so is nearly every other oil E&P in the market. Valiant shares are just as cheap and when you add in the $500 million of tax credits and refunds Valiant shares are stupid cheap. So IMO Ithaca is making an extremely accretive acquisition on a per share basis even after the additional share issue.