I was quoted in an article published by The Wall Street Journal examining how companies are reporting the financial impact of COVID-19 in disclosures. Regulating bodies have warned they will be closely monitoring disclosures this year to ensure companies are not misleading investors about the true positive and negative financial effects of the pandemic.
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Bass, Berry & Sims attorneys Kevin Douglas, Eric Knox and Sehrish Siddiqui were co-presenters alongside Stephanie Bignon, Assistant General Counsel, Delta Air Lines and Priya Galante, Vice President, Assistant General Counsel & Assistant Secretary, AutoZone at the Society for Corporate Governance’s Southeastern Chapter webinar earlier this month.
This program, titled, “Preparing for the Upcoming Proxy
Following up on our prior blog post regarding 2020 first quarter COVID-19 adjustments in connection with the presentation of non-GAAP financial measures, we surveyed 102 S&P 500 companies who presented Adjusted EBITDA in their earnings release filed from October 1, 2020, to December 31, 2020.
We focused on Adjusted EBITDA in this survey (recognizing that such measure is utilized more frequently in some industries than others) because such measure is commonly utilized by public companies to measure their operational performance and frequently includes adjustments for items that are believed not to reflect the ongoing operational performance of the company. While we limited our survey to S&P 500 companies that presented Adjusted EBITDA, we believe that the survey results have relevance for companies that present other types of non-GAAP performance measures that are adjusted for special items or items outside of the ordinary course of business.
Of the surveyed companies, 16 companies, or approximately 16%, included an adjustment in their calculation of Adjusted EBITDA related in some form to the COVID-19 pandemic, and 84% did not. The companies that included a COVID-19 adjustment in their Adjusted EBITDA calculation span across various industries, including, but not limited to, oil & gas, real estate, telecom services, lodging/hotel, and medical/scientific instruments.
Continue Reading Adjusting for COVID-19 in Non-GAAP Financial Measures: A Survey of 2020 Fourth Quarter Disclosure Practices
I was recently featured on the Deep Dive with Dave podcast hosted by Dave Lynn from TheCorporateCounsel.net. Dave and I discussed the following questions:
In a prelude of things to come for public companies, on December 4 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued restaurant operator The Cheesecake Factory Incorporated for making misleading disclosures regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its financial conditions and operations. After issuing warnings and guidance to public companies since the early stages of the pandemic, this is the SEC’s first time charging a public company for misleading disclosures relating to the pandemic.
The allegations against The Cheesecake Factory are straight forward. Early in the pandemic, The Cheesecake Factory disclosed in SEC filings that its restaurants were “operating sustainably.” The SEC alleged this disclosure contradicted internal company documents, which showed that due to the pandemic the company was losing approximately $6 million in cash per week, was projected to run out of cash in 16 weeks, and had notified its landlords that it would not pay rent in April.
The inadequacy of The Cheesecake Factory’s SEC filings was further confirmed according to the SEC when the company later shared the undisclosed financial information with potential private equity investors and lenders in connection with an effort to seek additional liquidity.
Continue Reading SEC Files First Charges for Inadequate Public Company COVID-19 Disclosures
On November 17, in response to a formal rulemaking petition that garnered support from nearly 100 public companies, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a final rule amending Regulation S-T and the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system (EDGAR) Filer Manual to permit the use of electronic signatures when electronically filing documents with the SEC. The amendments will be effective upon publication in the Federal Register, though the SEC indicated in its November 20 Statement that it will not take enforcement action against issuers who elect to comply with the amendments before their effectiveness so long as signatories comply with the new requirements.
Rule 302(b) of Regulation S-T, as amended, will permit a signatory to an electronic filing to electronically sign the document, provided that the signatory follows certain procedures and the electronic signature meets certain requirements specified in the EDGAR Filer Manual. Under those requirements, the electronic signing process must, at a minimum do the following:
This is a continuation of our series addressing steps companies can take to protect themselves during government enforcement actions related to COVID-19. For more information, see our previous articles addressing corporate best practices and the health care industry.
COVID-19 has affected the financial conditions and operations of all public companies, most in a negative way but some in very positive ways. Regardless of the impact, all public companies must consider the anticipated scrutiny they will receive from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the possible risk they face from SEC Enforcement if they do not proceed with caution. While the rules and landscape may continue to evolve, it seems apparent at this point that SEC scrutiny related to COVID-19 is most relevant in the following ways.
1. SEC Enforcement’s role in monitoring relief funding. In a prior article, we discussed steps health care companies can take to protect themselves against government investigations related to COVID-19. But all companies that received relief funding must be careful.
Continue Reading How Public Companies Can Protect Against SEC Scrutiny Related to COVID-19
Subscribers to our blog know that we monitor EDGAR for new SEC comment letters and enjoy bringing attention to the more interesting ones. In today’s blog post, we bring you three new SEC comment letter exchanges.
SEC Staff Wants More Information about a COVID-19 Adjustment in Non-GAAP Net Income
We’ve previously blogged about COVID-19-related adjustments in connection with the presentation of non-GAAP financial measures, including the difficulty that some public companies may have in reasonably quantifying the extent to which incremental expenses were driven by the COVID-19 pandemic as opposed to other factors.
Continue Reading Recent SEC Comment Letters of Interest Regarding COVID-19 Adjustments, SAB 99 and South Korea
Following up on our prior blog post regarding first quarter COVID-19 risk factor disclosure considerations and our prior blog post regarding second quarter COVID-19 risk factor disclosure considerations, we surveyed the risk factor disclosures of 75 calendar year-end NYSE- and Nasdaq-listed companies included in Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q (Form 10-Qs) filed for the first and second quarters of 2020.
Of the companies surveyed, we found that 96%, or 72 of the companies surveyed, included standalone risk factors related to COVID-19 (the average number of COVID-19 risk factors was approximately 1.16). None of the companies surveyed included an additional standalone COVID-19 risk factor in the second quarter Form 10-Q that was not in the first quarter Form 10-Q. Approximately 63%, or 47 of the companies surveyed, updated their COVID-19 risk factor disclosure from their first quarter 2020 Form 10-Q in their second quarter 2020 Form 10-Q.
The three companies that did not include a standalone COVID-19 risk factor disclosure during their first or second quarter 2020 Form 10-Q did include language indicating that COVID-19 could exacerbate or heighten the risk factors that were previously included in their 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K. A small portion of the companies we surveyed repeated the risk factor disclosure from their first quarter Form 10-Q verbatim in their second quarter Form 10-Q. However, most of the companies that did not update their first quarter Form 10-Q COVID-19 risk factor disclosure in their second quarter Form 10-Q incorporated their first quarter Form 10-Q risk factor disclosure by reference.
Continue Reading Updated Risk Factors in Response to COVID-19
In a first-quarter (for calendar year-end companies) SEC disclosure landscape dominated by COVID-19 considerations, almost all public companies included a new risk factor addressing COVID-19 in their first quarter Form 10-Q. Public companies are now considering potential risk factor disclosure in their Form 10-Q related to COVID-19 (see our prior blog post regarding first quarter COVID-19 risk factor disclosure considerations).
With respect to assessing whether to include potential COVID-19 risk factor disclosure in upcoming Form 10-Qs, as a starting point, Part II, Item 1A of Form 10-Q requires that public companies “set forth any material changes from risk factors as previously disclosed in the registrant’s Form 10-K” (emphasis added).
This language from Form 10-Q, on its face, would appear to require public companies to continue to disclose risk factors included in a prior Form 10-Q in any subsequent Form 10-Qs filed before the next Form 10-K in light of the statement about including material changes from the prior Form 10-K (compare the 2005 adopting release of the SEC promulgating this Form 10-Q risk factor requirement, which stated that the Form 10-Q should disclose risk factors “to reflect material changes from risks factors as previously disclosed in Exchange Act reports” (emphasis added).
While practice has not been uniform regarding whether public companies repeat risk factors included in a prior Form 10-Q in subsequent Form 10-Qs, there is a good argument based on the text of Form 10-Q as cited above that public companies should continue to repeat (with updated language, as applicable) risk factors included in a prior Form 10-Q in subsequent Form 10-Qs through the filing of the next Form 10-K (assuming that the risk remains applicable).