08 Nov Flash: Reg A+ Funding Doubles

Reporting from the Practising Law Institute’s Annual Institute on Securities Regulation here in NYC. I was honored to serve on a panel next to Jennifer Zepralka, head of the SEC’s Office of Small Business Policy. Jennifer provided a very positive report on Regulation A+. Here are the highlights:

• Since the new Reg A+ rules went effective in June 2015 and through September 2018, 123 public offerings were completed raising a total of $1.3 billion. That’s an average of  about $10 million raised per deal since 2015.
• These numbers compare to the report from a year ago that 69 deals had been completed by September 2017 raising an aggregate of $612 million or $8.8 million per deal. Doing the simple math, this means there were 54 new deals in the last year – close to double the number of deals compared to the two plus years before.
• Doing more math: total funding in the last year more than doubled the total amount raised though Reg A+ offerings from the two years before. In other words, $612 raised between June 2015 and September 2017 and another $688 raised just in the one year ended September 2018.
• Doing more more math: the average deal size increased notably to $12.7 million in the year ended September 2018 vs. $8.8 million in the two years ended September 2017. That’s a 44% increase in the average deal size.

Jennifer also reported on the SEC’s Congressional mandate, under the Improving Access to Capital Act, to adopt rules to allow full SEC reporting companies to utilize Reg A+. She said the SEC is “taking steps” toward that regulatory initiative but offered no timeline on when it would be completed. She also made clear that current SEC reporting companies cannot go ahead and use Reg A+ until those rules are fully adopted.

Despite some of the reports (and my own commentary at times), Reg A+ is achieving its purpose – to help smaller companies raise capital and create jobs. And the fact that the number of deals, total funding and average deal size are all strongly increasing also is very encouraging. The “shakedown cruise” continues for exchange-listed Reg A+ issuers, but many believe this ship has many more years of successful dealmaking ahead.