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SEC Reporting Companies Soon to be Regulation A+ Eligible

June 11, 2018

Buried in new legislation mainly intended to ease Dodd-Frank restrictions on small banks is an expansion of Regulation A eligibility to include SEC reporting companies. Previously, such companies were not eligible. The new access to Regulation A will create a viable mini-public offering pathway for SEC reporting companies, particularly those not eligible for registering securities on the streamlined Form S-3 registration statement.

Regulation A is an exemption from registration requirements for offerings of up to $50 million in any 12-month period, subject to eligibility, disclosure and reporting requirements.  The exemption, often referred to as Regulation A+, provides for two tiers of offerings: Tier 1 for offerings of up to $20 million and Tier 2 for offerings of up to $50 million, in each case during any 12-month period. Tier 2 offerings are subject to additional disclosure and ongoing reporting requirements, but consequently benefit from preemption of state securities law registration and qualification requirements. As originally adopted, SEC reporting companies were not eligible to use Regulation A+.

On May 24, 2018, President Trump signed into law the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which primarily is intended to ease the burdens on smaller banks under Dodd-Frank. Buried in the Act is Section 508, entitled “Improving Access to Capital”, which expands the availability of Regulation A+ by requiring the SEC to remove the requirement that the issuer not be an SEC reporting company. Section 508 also requires the SEC to amend Regulation A+ so that any company subject to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Exchange Act will be deemed to have met the periodic and current reporting requirements of Regulation A+ if it satisfies the Section 13 reporting requirements.

Currently, public companies seeking to conduct small public offerings in the range of up to $50 million would likely register such offering with the SEC through a streamlined registration statement on Form S-3, which has certain significant benefits. Form S-3 is a short-form registration statement which allows the issuer to update the registration statement’s disclosure prospectively through incorporation by reference of the issuer’s subsequently filed current reports on Form 8-K and periodic reports on Form 10-Q and Form 10-K. This “evergreen” feature means that a company generally will not need to file any post-effective amendments to the registration statement, a time and cost saving advantage.

The process of completing a registered offering on Form S-3 is generally quicker and cheaper than even a Reg A+ offering. So as a practical matter, it’s unlikely that S-3 eligible issuers will opt to do a Reg A+ offering over S-3.

But use of Form S-3 is subject to several stringent issuer and transaction eligibility requirements, including that the issuer be organized and have its principal business operations in the United States and that it have a public float, i.e., aggregate market value of common equity held by non-affiliates, of at least $75 million (unless it’s a listed company, limits the offering amount to not more than one-third of the company’s public float during any 12-month period and is not a shell company).

So issuers that are not S-3 eligible may decide that a Reg A+ offering is an attractive alternative for raising up to $50 million. The benefits of Reg A+, even to an SEC reporting company, could be significant: freedom to “test the waters” with investors prior to launch, faster SEC review relative to registered offerings and preemption of state blue sky registration in Tier 2 offerings.