Are rumors of the demise of the public company greatly exaggerated?
As you’ve surely read and heard, there’s been a tremendous amount of hand wringing, particularly at the agency and congressional levels, about the steep decline in the number of public companies and IPOs. For example, in congressional testimony in 2017, SEC Chair Jay Clayton expressed concern regarding the decline in the number of public companies, contending that it is Mr. and Ms. 401(k) who bear the cost of this trend because they now have “fewer opportunities…to invest directly in high quality companies.” (See this PubCo post.) The topic has also been taken up by various House committees, SEC advisory committees and SEC forums, as well as by securities and industry organizations. (See this PubCo post, this PubCo post and this PubCo post.) However, in this article, a Cambridge professor cries “nonsense”: the primary dangers to public company status, such as buyouts by private equity and a recent bias against conducting IPOs, do not pose “an existential threat to the American public company.” While there are certainly fewer public companies than in decades past, “the public company remains as crucial a feature of the American economy as it has ever been.”
SEC enforcement action for materially misleading projections in the face of red flags and other actions
In case anyone needed a reminder from the SEC, this case against Sonus Networks, its CFO and VP of Sales may well serve as one: per the SEC’s Associate Director of Enforcement, a company needs to have a “reasonable basis” if it makes public projections or estimates about future financial results: “The investing community expects that when companies choose to provide public financial projections, there is a reasonable basis underpinning those projections….When a company ignores red flags or takes steps to make public financial projections inaccurate we will take appropriate action.”
Corp Fin issues new compliance guide for smaller reporting companies
Corp Fin has just posted A Small Entity Compliance Guide for Issuers that summarizes the recent amendments to the definition of “smaller reporting company” and related amendments. (See this PubCo post and this Cooley Alert.) The Guide also provides some clarification regarding timing and transition to the new definition.
Cooley Alert: SEC Expands Eligibility for Smaller Reporting Company Status
And here for your weekend reading pleasure is another Cooley Alert: SEC Expands Eligibility for Smaller Reporting Company Status. Very relaxing!
Is XBRL already obsolete?
You’ve got to just love the irony: the SEC’s amendments mandating the use of Inline XBRL aren’t even effective yet, and experts at an accounting conference have declared XBRL “nearly useless as an investment tool,” and “all but unnecessary.”
Is it time to regulate proxy advisory firms?
The idea of regulating proxy advisory firms has been in the ether for quite some time, but it’s an idea that never quite comes to fruition. However, there seems to be a lot of chatter about this topic now, raising the question: is now the time? According to this paper, The Big Thumb on the Scale: An Overview of the Proxy Advisory Industry, from Stanford’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance, while proxy advisory firms influence institutional voting decisions and corporate governance choices to a material extent, it “is not clear that the recommendations of these firms are correct and generally lead to better outcomes for companies and their shareholders.” In that light, the paper suggests that some type of regulation of proxy advisory firms might be warranted to increase their transparency and improve the reliability of their recommendations.
Cooley Alert: SEC Amends Rule 701(e) and Issues Concept Release Regarding Rule 701 and Form S-8
Here’s some mighty fine reading: Cooley Alert: SEC Amends Rule 701(e) and Issues Concept Release Regarding Rule 701 and Form S-8.
Cooley Alert: SEC Adopts Mandatory Inline XBRL
For some riveting nighttime reading, you might want to take a look at our Cooley Alert, SEC Adopts Mandatory Inline XBRL. I’m sure you’ll find it both suspenseful and moving!
Are non-GAAP financial measures still problematic?
A couple of years ago, the SEC made a big push—through a series of staff oral admonitions and written guidance, as well as one enforcement action—toward requiring issuers to be more transparent and more consistent in the use of non-GAAP financial measures and to avoid altogether non-GAAP measures that were misleading. For example, companies were advised that they needed to present GAAP measures with equal or greater prominence relative to the non-GAAP measures. (See, e.g., this PubCo post.) And, as this article revealed, according to Audit Analytics, in 2016, over 25% of the companies in the S&P 500 index had shifted their presentations to put GAAP at the top of their quarterly earnings releases and 81% made GAAP numbers most prominent, compared with only 52% for the prior quarterly earnings releases. (See this PubCo post.) By the end of 2017, the SEC was apparently sufficiently satisfied with the response that the pendulum had swung back, and there was less staff focus and comment on non-GAAP financial measures. (See this PubCo post.) But is that really the end of the story? How “good” are the numbers that are fed to investors?
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