Scott Ellis on New SEC Reporting Plan and Implications for the Energy Sector
Foley & Lardner LLP partner Scott Ellis was featured across the media discussing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed shift from a quarterly to a semiannual earnings reporting schedule for public companies.
Speaking to Law360 for the article, “New SEC Reporting Plan May Not Sway Energy Cos.,” Ellis said, “You might have situations where you have contracts that require some credit-worthiness — if the contracts require a company to provide the quarterly filings, what happens when the quarterly filings aren’t required, at least to the government? Will you basically be having to do it anyway because of the way the contract is written?”
He also explained that energy companies, specifically ones operating across multiple states, might also have to comply with various state and local reporting obligations.
“Some of those jurisdictions, the taxing authorities, permitting authorities, environmental authorities, require that you submit quarterly filings, and often are satisfied by just submitting your 10-Q,” Ellis added, highlighting the additional complexity for multistate operators.
In S&P Global Market Intelligence, Ellis said “in terms of what they have to do on a day-to-day basis to satisfy contractual and lending requirements, I don’t think they’re looking at this as saving time. Trying to manage two separate timetables if they decided to adopt semiannual SEC reporting just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for them.”
On power purchase agreements, Ellis pointed out they also “have very strict and detailed reporting requirements that often match a quarterly reporting cadence.”
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