Welcome back to Squawk Box. New this morning, Anthony Pompliano is here and he is taking a blank check company public right here on the Nasdaq. It's going to list under the ticker PAPU. Joining us right now first on CNBC is the man himself, Anthony Pompliano, CEO of Professional Capital Management. And they're saying SPACs are back, sir. So this is a SPAC. SPACs got a bad name, though. I was going to say, and we're going to talk about all of this in a moment. But I want to bring in one other member of this partnership of sorts, Brant Saunders, who we haven't seen in a long time. Brant, chairman and CEO of Bausch and Lomb, who's special advisor to the special Purpose Acquisition Company. Good morning to you as well.
So take us sort of back. What is this? What is this SPAC going to do? And most importantly, why are you pursuing this now, given there was a lot of hesitation about SPACs, obviously sort of the last vintage of them. And what's the difference?
Yeah. Look, I've got a very large audience online. Bankers have been pitching me for the last five years to do a SPAC, do an RTO, do whatever kind of public market mechanism. And frankly, I didn't see the demand from the private market. That all changed about six months ago. I think part of it is that there was a political change. There's a regulatory change specifically in financial services, where I think people see it as a tailwind, not a headwind anymore. And then I also think a lot of companies that were started between 2015 and 2020, they're now reaching maturity point where they can be a public company. And so based on that inbound demand that I started to see, I called Brant. Brant and I have been a friend for several years now. He's a shareholder in our investment firm. And I basically said, look, you're the best guy I know at doing this. You've got the most experience. And he's done $300 billion of acquisitions. And I said, you know, help me figure this out. And we decided to do it together.
So, Brant, what kind of stuff would you want to buy just to sort of give us? I know you're not allowed to say a specific name, but sort of in the, in the vein of.
Yeah. So look, I'm an advisor. I think that that, you know, Anthony has consistently demonstrated a forward thinking approach to investing in transformative technologies and fintech. And I think our, our focus or Anthony's focus is really going to be on fintech financial services and looking for places where he can really use his media presence to amplify the visibility of the potential target. So it's a really nice combination and someone I just have great admiration for and someone I thought I could could help with. A lot of hard learned lessons over 17 years of being a public company CEO.
In the most transparent way possible. Explain the economics for the sponsor, and I just want to context and caveat this by saying, one of the reasons why I think SPACs got a bad name during the last vintage was because a lot of the sponsors made an enormous amount of money, but unfortunately, the shareholders did not. And I don't think that everybody fundamentally understood exactly how the economics played out for everybody.
Yeah, it's a great question. I think there's two major points here. The first thing is a lot of the reason why SPACs got a bad name is because people basically were doing public venture capital. They were buying companies that were losing lots of money at high prices, and they were crossing their fingers and hoping that those companies grew into valuations. Some did do that, but a lot of them didn't. And so naturally, if you put a company that's losing a lot of money at a high valuation, public market, public market investors are smart and they hammer the company. I think what we're really focused on is being super disciplined and buying a cash flow positive business that still has all the right criteria that you want in terms of high growth potential and good team. But if you do a good deal at a good price, it doesn't matter who the sponsor is. The company should do well in the public markets, and that's ultimately what we're trying to do.
But how much how much will you make?
Yeah, in terms of the economics, the way that this works is the sponsor at different price points is putting capital in at different share prices when it prices at $10 a share, if the share price obviously goes up, everyone, including the shareholders, makes money. Now, if the share price goes down, the sponsor can still make money. But I think that one of the things that Brant and I both have looked at this is, you know, for me, the capital that I'm putting at risk here, right, are investment firms putting millions of dollars into this. And so we've got real skin in the game in terms of that. But I'm taking huge reputation risk with this. And so one thing that I've been very clear with folks is I cannot be a SPAC sponsor that goes does a deal, sells the shares and goes and does another one. Right. But my reputation is on this. I've got to be able to not only go and do a good deal at a good price. I also have to be able to help build that company for the long run and create shareholder value. And so it's really the reputation risk, I think is probably the biggest thing that I'm most focused on.
Straight on the numbers. Let's say it's $10 a share. You capture let's not forget about going up. Let's just say it stays at $10 a share. You capture how much of that?
Well, if you think of how much money. So we've put $5 million into the US and investors $5 million into the risk capital of that. That obviously today is $50 million as the pricing.
So you're five of the 50.
