Tag: SEC comment letters

SEC staff comment letters regarding non-GAAP financial measures

You might recall that, in 2016 and early 2017, the SEC made a big push—through a series of staff oral admonitions and written guidance, as well as an enforcement action—to require 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.)  By early 2017, the SEC staff were apparently sufficiently satisfied (see this PubCo post) with the responses to their campaign that the pendulum swung back, and the relentless finger-wagging by the staff about non-GAAP financial measures appeared to have tailed off.  (See this PubCo post.) But, according to this analysis from Audit Analytics, it wasn’t until this year that the SEC staff’s comments regarding non-GAAP financial measures actually began to decline. 

Academic study shows increases in insider sales prior to public release of certain SEC comment letters

by Cydney Posner Articles in Compliance Week and Forbes  report on a recent academic study showing unusually high levels of stock sales by insiders in the period prior to public release of SEC comment letters that addressed revenue recognition issues, a topic that can often spell trouble at many companies. The level of […]