Monday night, the Haymaker team filed for their second SPAC with the $300 million Haymaker Acquisition Corp. II (HYACU).  “HYAC II” will be seeking to capitalize on their recent success with the OneSpaWorld deal, by once again focusing on consumer products and services, which plays to their background and strengths.  By all measures, Haymaker #1/OneSpaWorld was a big winner with the team closing that transaction in just over 15 months with the combined company now trading at ~$13.42.  But can they repeat that magic?

Well, this time around, Haymaker II is using 1/3 of a warrant rather than the 1/2 they used for their first SPAC. However, everything else about their structure is pretty much the same.  Even Cantor is back as underwriter.  However, there is one notable exception: This time, the underwriters are participating in the at-risk capital for Haymaker II, with Cantor purchasing $500,000 worth of warrants at $1.50 and Stifel, their advisor, is in for $100,000 worth of the total $8 million pool.  Is that meaningful? Not really.  That’s only 7.5%, whereas with other SPACs, it can sometimes reach as high as 30%.

However, Stifel, as an advisor, is interesting.  As we already know, Cantor does not like to share covers.  More often than not, they prefer to go it alone and would appear to reluctantly add co-leads or co-managers. As a matter of fact, since 2013 (when Cantor first got involved in SPACs), Cantor has had solo covers on 13 of their 22 completed deals, or 59% of them. So rather than an underwriter’s role, it would appear Stifel was given an advisor’s position instead.  Regardless, it’s a nice win for Stifel to be involved in whatever form it needed to take.

Additionally, in a bit of serendipity, the original CIBC Global Crossing team of Jay Bloom, Dean Kehler and Andrew Heyer, will have competing SPACs out searching for targets.  Jay Bloom and Dean Kehler, of Gx Acquisition Corp., priced their IPO last night at nearly the exact same time Andrew Heyer’s Haymaker II was making its first public filing.  Should make for a little sporting rivalry around the ol’ SPAC club, eh?…who’s going to bring the better deal?

However, to recap, Haymaker has stepped up their game and is now asking for 1/3 warrant instead of their previous 1/2 warrant. This feels “warranted”.  They completed Haymaker #1 in well under 24 months (~15 months) and their combination is trading around $13.40, so they’ve earned that 1/3 warrant.  They’ve shown they can deliver, so the expectation is they’ll repeat that success.

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