With respect, your analogy of house “under offer”, is wrong. The...

With respect, your analogy of house “under offer”, is wrong. The comparable to that would be a deal agreedand subject to conditions precedent. In which case an announcement would be forthcoming. So, if they have not yet got a deal (subject to conditions), that means that they are, at best still negotiating. 

If if they are negotiating with one then an announcement could undermine that as the other(s) walks and the negotiating party now has a strengthened hand as they know that 88e has heightened market expectations of an imminent deal.

If they are not yet negotiating, then status quo till we run out of time in the guided Q1 window.

My simple point is that we are not yet half way through the quarter, and that no news is not necessarily a negative portent. Time will tell.

Whatever transpired, I am reasonably sure that the BoD will play this in a way to leave themselves in the (relatively) strongest position that they can engineer, to ensure ongoing funding.