Home » Blogs » BREAKING: Global Digital Solutions to Buy Freedom Group for $1.082b

BREAKING: Global Digital Solutions to Buy Freedom Group for $1.082b

Robert Farago - comments No comments

(courtesy freedom-group.com)

“Global Digital Solutions, Inc. (OTC-QB: GDSI), a company that is positioning itself as a leader in providing cyber arms manufacturing, complementary security and technology solutions and knowledge-based, cyber-related, culturally attuned social consulting in unsettled areas, today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) providing information regarding three proposed transactions, including an unsolicited letter of intent to acquire Remington Outdoor Company, Inc., also known as Freedom Group, Inc. (“Freedom”),” money.cnn.com reports, without offering any guidance as to what “culturally attuned social consulting in unsettled areas” means. Bottom line . . .

GDSI has made an unsolicited offer to purchase freedom for $1.082 billion in cash. Freedom has estimated that its net sales for 2013 will be in the range of $1.250 billion to $1.275 billion and that its adjusted EBITDA will be in the range of $235 million to $240 million. The Form 8-K may be accessed at www.sec.gov or on GDSI’s website at www.gdsi.co.

So how’s that again? What does GDI want with Remington and the rest of the Freedom Group’s firearms-related manufacturers: Bushmaster Firearms, DPMS/Panther Arms, Marlin, H&R, The Parker Gun, Mountain Khakis, Advanced Armament Corp., Dakota Arms, Para USA and Barnes Bullets? Try this:

This model, which takes advantage of market trends, technological advances and industry consolidations to fuel profitable growth, presents a value proposition that is perfectly suited to the military armament industry, an industry that is heavily fragmented and evolving rapidly toward a RFID/WiFi-enabled technology platform.  In this dynamic environment, we see enormous opportunity to consolidate this market with a program of targeted acquisitions, including the proposed Freedom transaction.  Technological convergence is the future in the cyber/smart arms arena and we’re eager to leverage our proven history of success by helping Freedom and others navigate the transition from analog to digital.

Not buying it? Good thing you’re not writing the check.

The sale makes good on Cerberus Capital Group’s pledge to deep-six the Freedom Group in December 2012, after calling the Sandy Hook massacre “a watershed event that has raised the national debate on gun control to an unprecedented level.” Not-so-coincidentally after a California teachers’ union pension fund threatened to pull-out of Cerberus if they didn’t bail out of Freedom (which includes the company that manufactured the firearm Lanza used in his attack).

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Robert Farago

Robert Farago is the former publisher of The Truth About Guns (TTAG). He started the site to explore the ethics, morality, business, politics, culture, technology, practice, strategy, dangers and fun of guns.

0 thoughts on “BREAKING: Global Digital Solutions to Buy Freedom Group for $1.082b”

  1. I love this website and hate reading syntax and grammatical errors in every single article. Please PROOF READ! It makes the site look unprofessional and like a illegitimate source. Hope this doesn’t get deleted.

    Reply
  2. So they want to make smart guns for the military and civilian market? Would it be fair to say call me when the Lawgiver Mark II is ready but not before?

    I do of course dredd the failures that will come between now and that point.

    Reply
    • All the above companies have gone downhill, and I steer clear of them anyway. There are plenty of better options. I hope the gun grabbing idiots that try to implement “smart” guns end up broke and living in a cardboard box.

      Reply
  3. Dear ACLU of New Jersey–

    I can assure you that there is a clear, qualitative difference between Johnny Cash singing a prison blues song and someone who emulates and advocates the lyrics in their songs.

    Fun fact: Johnny Cash specifically wrote “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die” because he thought it was the worst thing a person could say or do, which he wanted to use to illustrate the rough-and-tough nature of Folsom inmates.

    Now indulge yourselves, and watch Johnny Cash hunting crows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk4jWlSPzr0

    Reply
  4. I’d be willing to bet that gdsi will devalue these companies so much that a good gun company or venture capitalist can buy them for cheap and use all those patents and the like for good. Besides, no one likes freedom group in the first place.

    Reply
  5. Odell’s Bourbon Barrel Stout. A beer that will change your life for you. New Belgium Lips of Faith La Folie is also pretty darn good. Breckenridge’s 72 Imperial will do the job too.

    Anything but the standard “Olde Canoe Hump American Lager/Pilsner”, people
    seems to quaff by the gallon.

    Reply
  6. You sure this isn’t a hoax? That press release reads like it could have been written by the Onion. Or by the conspiracy theorists we usually scoff at.

    Reply
  7. I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it. If we break gun control in Ca, then it’s finished. The gun market alone is ginormous here.

    I have lost count of the number of immigrents that have asked me questions about how to buy a gun and if they could. It seems as if the first thing they do when they get here, after securing a job and place to live, is find out what it takes to buy a gun.

    Constitutional carry by the end of the decade. Nationwide.

    Reply
  8. oh what tangled webs…..whatever…….
    why MDA picked on Staples? a Concealed Handgun Permit holder had a negligent discharge:
    http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=9201518
    who is Shannon Watts? well, she’s changed her name for one:
    Shannon Troughton/ Shannon Watts is far from the image of a traditional mom who was baking cookies.
    http://adam.curry.com/art/1371364990_mz2UFs4r.html

    bottom line: Shannon is getting PAID, just like a lawyer is paid to represent an idiot client.
    Staples is an innocent bystander due to an idiot customer, but Staples won’t have any
    actual stores much longer, so they don’t care, since their future emphasis is online.

    Reply
  9. How does a company with a 73.19M Market Cap line up 750M in cash, as per their filed 8K? Their income and balance sheets are a little dated on Yahoo, but Global Digital Solutions only had 1M in cash back in Sept. 2013. Their stock price is under a dollar and the 52 week range is 0.09 – 1.39? Does not seem credible.

    Reply
  10. how can you be charged over lyrics? also how are famous rappers not get in legal trouble for their lyrics?
    “chopper knock your face off”
    “banana clip makes a mess”
    “go to your funeral and kill everybody but the preacher”
    “see me walking with a limp, thats my gun walk”
    “just know that when i see you its going to be a homicide”
    thats just a few violent rap lyrics. why are the artists of these violent lyrics not on trial? (not that i would like to see them on trial just for lyrics)

    Reply
    • He wasn’t charged over lyrics. He was charged over shooting a guy in the head. Which, even for rap “artists,” is considered just a little bit extreme.

      Reply
  11. As an experienced finance attorney with a great deal of experience in such sophisticated matters, allow me to translate:

    “We think we can make a quick buck.”

    If you thought Remington sucked before, just wait. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

    Reply
  12. A very good friend is a CT LEO whose job is door-kicking, when needed. He has indicated that he and his men will not kick in doors to enforce anti-2A laws on otherwise law-abiding citizens. He says he has spoken to his peers across the state, many of whom feel the same way.

    However, he has no doubt that there are those who will execute such orders, particularly at the state level. As he points out, in addition to principle, when you are a local cop, it is tough to be the Gestapo where you work everyday, and live in many cases. But, when you are called in from out of town, there is less affinity to the locals and/or concerns about backlash.

    Reply
  13. Let’s hope this highly productive citizen beats this “rap” so he can go back to his lucrative job as a potential Grammy Award winning musician.

    Reply
  14. Recoil is composed of two components – muzzle rise and backward push/kick. This research measured only muzzle rise. Although that is very important (muzzle rise has more effect on time to return to on-target), it only tells half of the story. Backward push/kick/sharpness effects how “harsh” a gun feels and how much it seems to ‘beat you up’ as you are shooting multiple rounds through it.

    I prefer shooting my Sig P220 (.45, 230 gr., aluminum frame, about 38 ounces loaded) versus my Sig SP2022 (9mm, 115gr., polymer frame, about 36 ounces loaded). The P220 has more recoil, but it is softer (not as sharp) as the SP2022. My arm is less tired after several dozen rounds, and follow-up shots (the 2nd-plus shots in a quick series) are quicker and more accurate.

    Do my personal results agree with this study? I don’t know. It just feels like a very important factor, the backward push/kick, has been left out of this study. Maybe it will receive more attention in Part 2 or 3 of the study.

    Reply
  15. Just so long as his next rap “song” isn’t threatening the judge. BTW, I once heard that rap is to music as Etch a Sketch is to art.

    Reply
  16. also seriously, a company w/ a market cap of barely $65MIL is buying a conglomeration of companies ‘worth’ over $1BIL, means leveraged loans and shady creditors; any anti-gun billionaire with multiple trusts and shell companies could’ve bought ’em.

    ach. let the fuckers go the way of DoDo. Sick and tired of them all.

    AAC is nothing, without its founder. Barnes, while would’ve been nice to have stayed independent, sold their souls; I’ll stick to Sierra and Hornady, thank you very much. And really, who’s gonna miss Para…other than Todd… .o|

    as for the rest under the umbrella? c’est la vie.

    Remington may as well become the GM of the gunworld, and just be under the auspices of Fed. Govt bailout central.

    fucking corporatist losers. all of them. let the bad market players fail.

    bankruptcy is what they all deserve, if they thought nothing of selling their asses to useless-to-humanity-papershuffling pansies of Wall St./Greenwich, CT/City of London.

    Reply
  17. u guys are aware that RFID gets used in every credit card you use? and yet u use them “safely” all the time. to me it is just ridiculous how stupid and brainwashed u guys are. Fuck Armatix as you say but be realistic this technology will come in the future and then what can u do. u guys created the capitalist system the way it is today and u should realize that what this stupid company does is, is just precisely what any company should do in a capitalist state. i agree that its the politicians fault, but i mean most of the comments i read here really just prove to me how thick the general US person is. sayonara

    Reply
  18. Part of me wants this to go through just so these loons can lose ONE BILLION DOLLARS. I know there are deep pockets going after gun rights, but dropping ONE BILLION DOLLARS on a guaranteed money loser will hurt, and it’s money they won’t spend on buying politicians and sock puppet mouthpeices.

    Reply

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