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Franklin sells interest in company, retires shares


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Updated

Franklin Electronic Publishers Inc. sold its shares in a French software company to Amazon.com Inc. and retired 29 percent of its outstanding preferred stock.

The Burlington City, N.J., publisher of electronic books sold its 16,765 ordinary shares in MobiPocket.com SA to Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) in connection with Amazon's purchase of all MobiPocket's outstanding shares.

Franklin (AMEX: FEP) received about $2.5 million in cash and expects to realize a gain of about $1.7 million in the last quarter of its 2005 fiscal year, which ends Thursday.

MobiPocket will continue to develop software for Franklin and license its software to Franklin.

Separately, Franklin retired 29 percent of its outstanding preferred stock for $1 million. The company still has 2,434 preferred shares with a liquidation value of about $2.4 million outstanding.

Franklin also said it will recognize $1.7 million in revenue from its linguistic technology agreement with Adobe Systems Inc. in the first quarter of its 2006 fiscal year, which begins Friday. It had anticipated recognizing the revenue in its 2005 fiscal year, which ends Thursday.