SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
FORM
(Mark One)
For the fiscal year ended
For the transition period from to
(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)
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(State or other jurisdiction of | (Commission File Number) | (I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) |
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(Address of principal executive offices) | (Zip Code) |
Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: (
Not Applicable
(Former name or former address, if changed since last report)
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:
Title of Each Class: |
| Trading Symbol: |
| Name of Each Exchange on Which Registered: |
Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act. Yes ☐
Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Exchange Act. Yes ☐
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§ 232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit and post such files).
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company or an emerging growth company. See definition of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act. Yes ☒ No ☐
☐ Large accelerated filer | ☐ Accelerated filer | ||
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If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act). Yes
The aggregate market value of the voting and non-voting shares held by non-affiliates of the registrant, as of June 30, 2021, the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter, was approximately $
As of March 31, 2022,
Documents Incorporated by Reference: None.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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CERTAIN TERMS
Unless otherwise stated in this Annual Report on Form 10-K (this “Report”), or the context otherwise requires, references to:
| ● | “Advisors” or our “Advisory Board” are to Jeff Stibel, Will Quist, Michael Kim, Eli Broverman, Carter Reum, Courtney Reum, Dan Teran, Jesse Pujji, Colin Walsh, and Jeff Hunter; |
| ● | “common stock” are to our Class A common stock and our Class B common stock, collectively; |
| ● | “founder shares” are to shares of our Class B common stock initially purchased by our sponsor in a private placement prior to the offering, and the shares of our Class A common stock issued upon the conversion thereof; |
| ● | “initial stockholders” are to holders of our founder shares prior to our offering; |
| ● | “management” or our “management team” are to Chris Hollod and Matt Eby; |
| ● | “management” or our “management team” are to our officers and directors, and “directors” are to our current directors and director nominees; |
| ● | “private placement warrants” are to the warrants issued to our sponsor in a private placement simultaneously with the closing of the offering; |
| ● | “public shares” are to shares of our Class A common stock sold as part of the units in the offering; |
| ● | “public stockholders” are to the holders of our public shares, including our initial stockholders and management team to the extent our initial stockholders and/or members of our management team purchase public shares, provided that each initial stockholder’s and member of our management team’s status as a “public stockholder” shall only exist with respect to such public shares; |
| ● | “sponsor” are to Tailwind Sponsor LLC, a Delaware limited liability company; and |
| ● | “we,” “us,” “our,” “company” or “our company” are to Tailwind Acquisition Corp. |
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CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This Report, including, without limitation, statements under the heading “Item 7. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, (the “Securities Act”) and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, (the “Exchange Act”). These forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, including the words “believes,” “estimates,” “anticipates,” “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “may,” “will,” “potential,” “projects,” “predicts,” “continue,” or “should,” or, in each case, their negative or other variations or comparable terminology. There can be no assurance that actual results will not materially differ from expectations. Such statements include, but are not limited to, any statements relating to our ability to consummate any acquisition or other business combination and any other statements that are not statements of current or historical facts. These statements are based on management’s current expectations, but actual results may differ materially due to various factors, including, but not limited to:
| ● | our ability to select an appropriate target business or businesses; |
| ● | our ability to complete any initial business combination; |
| ● | our expectations around the performance of the prospective target business or businesses; |
| ● | our success in retaining or recruiting, or changes required in, our officers, key employees or directors following our initial business combination; |
| ● | our officers and directors allocating their time to other businesses and potentially having conflicts of interest with our business or in approving our initial business combination, as a result of which they would then receive expense reimbursements; |
| ● | our potential ability to obtain additional financing to complete our initial business combination; |
| ● | our pool of prospective target businesses; |
| ● | our ability to consummate an initial business combination due to the uncertainty resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic; |
| ● | the ability of our officers and directors to generate a number of potential acquisition opportunities; |
| ● | our public securities’ potential liquidity and trading; |
| ● | the lack of a market for our securities; |
| ● | the use of proceeds not held in the trust account or available to us from interest income on the trust account balance; |
| ● | the trust account not being subject to claims of third parties; or |
| ● | our financial performance following the offering. |
The forward-looking statements contained in this Report are based on our current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effects on us. Future developments affecting us may not be those that we have anticipated. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond our control) and other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those factors described under the heading “Risk Factors.” Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of our assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary in material respects from those projected in these forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking
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statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. These risks and others described under “Risk Factors” may not be exhaustive.
By their nature, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that may or may not occur in the future. We caution you that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that our actual results of operations, financial condition and liquidity, and developments in the industry in which we operate may differ materially from those made in or suggested by the forward-looking statements contained in this Report. In addition, even if our results or operations, financial condition and liquidity, and developments in the industry in which we operate are consistent with the forward-looking statements contained in this Report, those results or developments may not be indicative of results or developments in subsequent periods.
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SUMMARY OF RISK FACTORS
The following is a summary of the principal risks described below in Part I, Item 1A “Risk Factors” in this Report. We believe that the risks described in the “Risk Factors” section are material to investors, but other factors not presently known to us or that we currently believe are immaterial may also adversely affect us. The following summary should not be considered an exhaustive summary of the material risks facing us, and it should be read in conjunction with the “Risk Factors” section and the other information contained in this Report.
| ● | We have no operating history and no revenues, and you have no basis on which to evaluate our ability to achieve our business objective. |
| ● | Past performance by our management team or our Advisors is not indicative of future performance of an investment in us. |
| ● | Our public stockholders may not be afforded an opportunity to vote on our proposed business combination, which means we may complete our initial business combination even though a majority of our public stockholders do not support such a combination. |
| ● | Your only opportunity to affect the investment decision regarding a potential business combination will be limited to the exercise of your right to redeem your shares from us for cash, unless we seek stockholder approval of the business combination. |
| ● | If we seek stockholder approval of our initial business combination, our initial stockholders have agreed to vote in favor of such initial business combination, regardless of how our public stockholders vote. |
| ● | The ability of our public stockholders to redeem their shares for cash may make our financial condition unattractive to potential business combination targets, which may make it difficult for us to enter into a business combination with a target. |
| ● | The ability of our public stockholders to exercise redemption rights with respect to a large number of our shares may not allow us to complete the most desirable business combination or optimize our capital structure. |
| ● | The ability of our public stockholders to exercise redemption rights with respect to a large number of our shares could increase the probability that our initial business combination would not be consummated and that you would have to wait for liquidation in order to redeem your stock. |
| ● | Our search for a business combination, and any target business with which we ultimately consummate a business combination, may be materially adversely affected by the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the status of debt and equity markets. |
| ● | We may not be able to complete our initial business combination within the prescribed time frame, in which case we would cease all operations except for the purpose of winding up and we would redeem our public shares and liquidate, in which case our public stockholders may only receive $10.00 per share, or less than such amount in certain circumstances, and our warrants will expire worthless. |
| ● | If we seek stockholder approval of our initial business combination, our sponsor, directors, officers, advisors and their affiliates may elect to purchase shares from public stockholders, which may influence a vote on a proposed business combination and reduce the public “float” of our Class A common stock. |
| ● | If a stockholder fails to receive notice of our offer to redeem our public shares in connection with our business combination, or fails to comply with the procedures for tendering its shares, such shares may not be redeemed. |
| ● | You will not have any rights or interests in funds from the trust account, except under certain limited circumstances. To liquidate your investment, therefore, you may be forced to sell your public shares or warrants, potentially at a loss. |
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| ● | The NYSE may delist our securities from trading on its exchange, which could limit investors’ ability to make transactions in our securities and subject us to additional trading restrictions. |
| ● | You are not entitled to protections normally afforded to investors of many other blank check companies. |
| ● | If we seek stockholder approval of our initial business combination and we do not conduct redemptions pursuant to the tender offer rules, and if you or a “group” of stockholders are deemed to hold in excess of 15% of our Class A common stock, you will lose the ability to redeem all such shares in excess of 15% of our Class A common stock. |
| ● | Because of our limited resources and the significant competition for business combination opportunities, it may be more difficult for us to complete our initial business combination. If we are unable to complete our initial business combination, our public stockholders may receive only approximately $10.00 per share on our redemption of our public shares, or less than such amount in certain circumstances, and our warrants will expire worthless. |
| ● | If the net proceeds of our initial public offering and the sale of the private placement warrants not being held in the trust account are insufficient to allow us to operate for at least 24 months following our initital public offering, we may be unable to complete our initial business combination, in which case our public stockholders may only receive $10.00 per share, or less than such amount in certain circumstances, and our warrants will expire worthless. |
| ● | If the net proceeds of our initial public offering and the sale of the private placement warrants not being held in the trust account are insufficient, it could limit the amount available to fund our search for a target business or businesses and complete our initial business combination and we will depend on loans from our sponsor or management team to fund our search for a business combination, to pay our franchise and income taxes and to complete our initial business combination. If we are unable to obtain these loans, we may be unable to complete our initial business combination. |
| ● | We may be required to take write-downs or write-offs, restructuring and impairment or other charges that could have a significant negative effect on our financial condition, results of operations and our stock price, which could cause you to lose some or all of your investment. |
| ● | If third parties bring claims against us, the proceeds held in the trust account could be reduced and the per-share redemption amount received by stockholders may be less than $10.00 per share. |
| ● | Our directors may decide not to enforce the indemnification obligations of our sponsor, resulting in a reduction in the amount of funds in the trust account available for distribution to our public stockholders. |
| ● | If, after we distribute the proceeds in the trust account to our public stockholders, we file a bankruptcy petition or an involuntary bankruptcy petition is filed against us that is not dismissed, a bankruptcy court may seek to recover such proceeds, and we and our board may be exposed to claims of punitive damages. |
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PART I
ITEM 1.BUSINESS
Overview
We are a blank check company incorporated as a Delaware corporation and formed for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses, which we refer to throughout this Report as our initial business combination. We are an early stage and emerging growth company and, as such, we are subject to all of the risk associated with early stage and emerging growth companies.
On September 9, 2020, we consummated an initial public offering of 33,421,570 units, including the 3,421,570 units as a result of the underwriter’s partial exercise of its over-allotment option, at an offering price of $10.00 per unit and a private placement with our Sponsor of 9,700,000 private placement warrants at a price of $1.00 per warrant. The gross proceeds from our initial public offering, together with certain of the proceeds from the private placement, totaled $343,915,700 in the aggregate.
We are seeking to capitalize on the multiple decades of combined investment experience of our management team, board of directors and Advisors who are both technology entrepreneurs as well as technology-oriented investors with a shared vision of identifying and investing in technology companies. We are also deeply experienced in identifying omni-channel trends that we believe are even more important in a COVID and post-COVID world. We believe that our management team’s, board of directors’ and Advisors’ relationships with leading technology company founders, executives of private and public companies, venture capitalists and growth equity fund managers and their ability to identify and implement value creation initiatives, in particular via marketing optimization, give us a competitive advantage. Our team has been immersed in the same ecosystem as the current founders of private companies who are making decisions on how to build currency for future growth and monetization.
While we may pursue an initial business combination target in any business, industry or geographical location, we intend to focus our search within the consumer internet, digital media and marketing technology sectors. We intend to capitalize on the ability of our management team to identify, acquire and operate a business or businesses that can benefit from our management team’s, board of directors’ and Advisors’ established relationships and operating experience. Our management team has extensive experience in identifying and executing strategic investments and has done so successfully in a number of sectors, particularly in digital consumer-facing businesses.
Accordingly, on March 1, 2021, we entered into a business combination agreement (the “Business Combination Agreement”), with Compass Merger Sub, Inc., (“Merger Sub”), QOMPLX Inc. (“QOMPLX”) and Rationem, LLC, in its capacity as the representative of the stockholders of QOMPLX (“QOMPLX Stockholder Representative”). On August 17, 2021, we entered into a termination agreement with QOMPLX (the “Termination Agreement”), effective as of such date, pursuant to which we agreed to mutually terminate the Business Combination Agreement. The termination of the Business Combination Agreement became effective on August 17, 2021.
Our Management Team, Board of Directors and Advisory Board
Philip Krim, our Chairman, has served as Casper Sleep Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer and as a member of its board of directors since October 2013. Since founding the Company in 2013, Mr. Krim has led Casper through tremendous growth, growing revenue from $15 million in 2014 to $497 million in 2020 (approximately 79% CAGR), and successfully took the company public in February 2020. Prior to that, Mr. Krim was the Chief Executive Officer of Vocalize Mobile, a mobile search advertising platform for small businesses, from January 2010 until July 2013, and the Chief Executive Officer of The Merrick Group from January 2003 until December 2009.
In addition to Mr. Krim, our board of directors includes private equity and venture capital veterans Chris Hollod, our Chief Executive Officer (Founder and Managing Partner of Hollod Holdings), Matt Eby, our Chief Financial Officer (Co-Founder and former Managing Partner of Tengram Capital Partners), and Alan Sheriff (Co-Founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Solebury Capital). Additionally, our board of directors also benefits from the rich expertise of Wisdom Lu (Founding Partner of Stibel Co. and Bryant Stibel), Boris Revsin (Managing Director and Head of Private Capital at Republic), and Will Quist (Partner at Slow Ventures).
In addition to our management team and board of directors, we have assembled a highly differentiated Advisory Board of accomplished founders and operators that will help position us as the value-add partner of choice for today’s leading entrepreneurs. The Advisory Board provides us significant advantages via their operational expertise and deep networks. Additionally, they provides deep domain
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expertise across our target sub-verticals which will be instrumental during our diligence processes. Our Advisory Board also provides us access to unique sourcing opportunities via their direct networks. Given the extensive operational experiences across our Advisory Board, our Advisors are able to provide guidance to our eventual target on how to best position the company for long term success.
Our Advisory Board is comprised of Jeff Stibel (Founding Partner of Stibel Co. and Bryant Stibel and former President CEO of Web.com), Michael Kim (Founder and Managing Partner of Cendana Capital), Dan Teran (Co-Founder and former CEO of Managed by Q), Eli Broverman (Co-Founder of Betterment), Carter Reum (Co-Founder and General Partner at M13), Courtney Reum (Co-Founder and General Partner at M13), Jesse Pujji (Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Ampush), Colin Walsh (Ouai Haircare), and Jeff Hunter (Founder of Talentism LLC).
With respect to the above, past performance of our management team or our Advisors is not a guarantee of either (i) success with respect to a business combination that may be consummated or (ii) the ability to successfully identify and execute a transaction. You should not rely on the historical record of management and its affiliates as indicative of future performance. Our management has no prior experience in operating blank check companies or special purpose acquisition companies.
Our management team, sponsor, officers, directors and Advisors may sponsor, form or participate in other blank check companies similar to ours during the period in which we are seeking an initial business combination. Any such companies may present additional conflicts of interest in pursuing an acquisition target, particularly in the event there is overlap among investment mandates. However, we do not currently expect that any such other blank check company would materially affect our ability to complete our initial business combination. In addition, our officers, directors and Advisors are not required to commit any specified amount of time to our affairs, and, accordingly, will have conflicts of interest in allocating management time among various business activities, including identifying potential business combinations and monitoring the related due diligence.
Our Mission
Our mission is to provide growth capital, strategic expertise and a preferred path to a public listing for disruptive high-growth technology and direct-to-consumer companies. We believe companies, at a certain stage in their development, will see material benefits from being publicly traded, including increasing brand and company awareness, developing a more liquid acquisition currency and diversifying funding sources and access to capital. An acquisition by a blank check company with a team that is well-known to, and respected by, technology and vertically focused company founders, their current third-party investors and their management teams, we believe, can provide a more transparent and efficient mechanism to bring a private technology company to the public markets.
Our Strategy and Target Industries
We believe that we are well positioned to identify attractive initial business combination opportunities across the technology and direct-to-consumer sectors. Our goal is to acquire a target that we can help achieve significant organic growth and could serve as a platform for future add on acquisitions with the goal of becoming an integrated provider offering a broad range of products or services across the technology ecosystem.
High-growth technology and direct-to-consumer companies that are successful at creating data-driven direct to consumer business models and addressing the significant consumer demand for more personalized experiences will reach significant financial scale and create shareholder value. With consumers spending more time online, brands can more easily control the entire customer journey from discovery to payment, often driving higher lifetime values. With transactions occurring online, there has been an explosion of data generated by consumers such as frequency of webpage visits, transaction size, viewed and saved items, checkout cart items, etc. As all this new data provides an opportunity for better targeting and marketing, many private companies have been raising significant private capital to deploy via marketing with the hopes of supercharging growth. However, many companies lack the marketing sophistication required to build a sustainable competitive moat with positive long-term unit economics. As our management team, board of directors and Advisors have seen, the best companies in these categories are able to efficiently acquire new customers and deliver a personalized experience which increases engagement and drives higher long-term retention.
Key sub-sectors within the technology ecosystem that we believe are poised to experience rapid growth and could benefit from the experiences of our management team, board of directors and Advisors include, but are not limited to, telehealth, eSports and digital gaming/betting, digital health and wellness, agriculture and food technology, education technology, financial and insurance technology, real estate technology, space technology and enterprise software companies, among others. The success or failure of companies that operate in these markets is largely driven by their ability to harness the power of data-driven marketing in an efficient manner.
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Tremendous market value has been created by these types of businesses over the last decade as entrepreneurs and investors have raced to build the next-generation of technology and direct-to-consumer internet brands.
Despite the significant growth of the sector, many companies remain private with no clear timetable to become public. We believe there exists a set of companies that with the right guidance and leadership could and should be public companies. This significant imbalance in the number of private companies and capital raised vs public companies is emblematic of a broken initial public offering market. With so much capital tied up in illiquid private markets, we believe there will be significant interest from founders and investors in these categories to engage with our team to achieve a public listing.
The ongoing coronavirus (“COVID-19”) pandemic has proven to be a catalyst for growth for our potential target universe, pulling forward digital consumer trends and adoption across several consumer categories. There are a number of businesses who have seen massive growth due in part to COVID-19 and they have needed and will continue to need capital to effectively address the increased demand for their products and services. We will likely represent an attractive option to many of these companies as an efficient and strategic way to raise capital and reach the public markets quickly.
Our management team, board of directors and Advisors have extensive experience building, advising and investing in companies operating in the same ecosystem as many of the companies in our target categories. We have leveraged and will continue to leverage our embedded relationships and network of peers in the space to quickly engage with founders in our target universe. Our unique set of experiences building omni-channel business models and operations will be viewed as a strategic asset to founders in our target categories. For example, in February 2020 our Chairman, Mr. Krim, successfully led the public debut of an omni-channel digital first brand, (Casper Sleep), putting him in a unique position to advise other founders in the category looking to reach the public markets.
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Additionally, our management team, board of directors and Advisors have an extensive track record of building data-driven marketing organizations, which has resulted in significant growth in both revenue and shareholder value. Our experience building sustaining consumer internet brands and leading marketing teams uniquely positions us to help companies in the category achieve their long-term vision and outperform the competition.
We aim to leverage our extensive expertise driving marketing innovation and revenue growth within leading public technology companies to help founders achieve long-term success and overcome any deterrents to becoming a public company. By leveraging our extensive operational experience and network, we believe we can provide significant benefits to potential targets and public market investors that can potentially lead to attractive long-term risk-adjusted returns in the public markets.
We believe there are significant opportunities in these industries to drive value creation, and the below themes will be general areas of focus:
| ● | Traditional late-stage growth equity targets looking for a liquidity event and valuable operating and marketing expertise; |
| ● | Business combinations (e.g. two competitors in similar segments) to achieve synergies from enhanced scale, liquidity and increased marketing efficiency; |
| ● | Verticalization of the target company through acquisitions (e.g. within downstream infrastructure and supply chain) to improve margins and IP defensibility; |
| ● | Global consolidation (e.g. two companies in similar segments but different geographies) to achieve synergies from enhanced scale, liquidity and increased marketing efficiency; |
| ● | Special situations (e.g., spin outs, divestitures) with strong brands that have potential for operational improvement and future growth; |
| ● | Rapidly growing companies with opportunity to change large categories. |
Our Value Proposition And Differentiation
Our management team, board of directors and Advisors bring a unique set of operational skills and transaction experience that will be highly relevant for today’s entrepreneur. In addition, the collective team’s capital markets, MA and capital raising experience will be invaluable to a potential target as they look to ready themselves for a public debut.
| ● | Extensive Operating Experience With Rare Skillsets: Our management team, board of directors and Advisors have extensive experience serving in leadership positions for high-growth public and private companies. The team boasts significant operational experience driving growth through innovative marketing techniques with Mr. Krim introducing innovative quantitative marketing approaches at Casper Sleep, with key areas of expertise including: (i) identifying superior brands and products using (a) data science to optimize audiences, (b) optimization of media mix of advertising (often purchased programmatically through real-time auctions), and (c) driving the ‘lifetime value’ of customers (via behavioral signals to drive promotions and engagement); and (ii) capturing and architecting the right customer data elements, using predictive modeling to drive propensity models that understand a customer’s wants and needs, and putting in place optimal marketing technologies to deploy experiences in real time. This expertise will be highly valuable for identifying categories and companies with under-optimized marketing practices and rapidly scaling customer acquisition and lifetime value, as well as for potential targets to understand their own customers and acquiring them efficiently to unlock growth. |
| ● | Significant Public Equity Capital Markets Experience: Our management team, board of directors and Advisors brings decades of “best-practice” know-how to ensure the target company’s success as a public company, providing guidance around (i) investor relations (ii) equity research (iii) introductions to long-only funds, among others. For example, Solebury Capital advised Casper Sleep on its IPO. Mr. Eby has significant experience navigating the public markets leading Starwood Property Trust’s (NYSE:STWD) $930 million IPO in 2009. Additionally, Mr. Krim successfully took Casper Sleep public in February 2020. |
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| ● | Attractive Industry Dynamics For SPAC Success: In the current environment, there is growing investor demand for companies with (i) a direct relationship with their customers, (ii) ability to efficiently market to and grow their customer base and (iii) high-growth and clear path to profitability. Our target verticals are ripe for consolidation with few large-cap companies and thousands of sub-scale companies. |
| ● | Founder Friendly Platform For Growth: The team brings to bear operational expertise and capital to accelerate the targets organic growth initiatives such as (i) optimization of marketing strategies (ii) operational improvements and (iii) new product development, among others. Our management team, board of directors and Advisors have the experience and track record to successfully integrate add-on acquisitions, bringing PE Sponsor-like support, without running / controlling the business. |
| ● | Transaction Expertise With Access To Proprietary Deal Flow: Having operated and invested in high-growth technology and direct-to-consumer companies across their corporate life cycles, our management team, board of directors and Advisors have developed deep relationships with key large multi-national organizations and leading private public equity investors including leading venture and growth investors in Silicon Valley and across the globe. Our team has a strong track record of building proprietary deal flow and identifying and executing successful MA transactions during tenures across A-Grade Investments, Tengram Capital Partners, Solebury Capital, Casper Sleep, and Credit Suisse. We believe our reputation and relevant experience makes Tailwind a preferred partner for potential targets. Mr. Eby, in particular, brings significant experience managing and executing complex transactions across a variety of deal structures. |
Business Combination Criteria and Sourcing Process
We intend to leverage what we believe is a competitive advantage in sourcing potential targets that will materially benefit from our unique expertise and where we are best situated to augment the value of the business following the completion of the initial business combination.
We believe our management team is well positioned to identify unique opportunities across the technology private company landscape. Our selection process will leverage our relationships with leading technology company founders, executives of private and public companies, venture capitalists and growth equity funds, in addition to the extensive industry and geographical reach of the management team, board of directors and Advisors which we believe should provide us with a key competitive advantage in sourcing potential business combination targets.
We also believe that our management team’s, the board of directors’ and Advisors’ reputation, experience and track record of making investments in the technology industry make us a preferred partner for these potential targets. Given our profile and thematic approach, we anticipate that target business candidates may be brought to our attention from various unaffiliated sources, in particular founders of, and investors in, other private and public technology companies in our networks.
We intend to focus our target sourcing efforts on assessing companies that we believe would benefit significantly from being publicly traded. Further, we believe that we are providing an interesting alternative investment opportunity that capitalizes on key trends impacting the capital markets for technology companies.
Consistent with our strategy, we have identified the following general criteria and guidelines that we believe are important in evaluating prospective target businesses. We expect to conduct a comprehensive due diligence review which will include, among other things, management and employee meetings, review of financial information, facility inspection, and an extensive review of all other material target company information. We intend to use these criteria as guidelines in evaluating potential acquisition opportunities, but an acquisition may be executed even if it does not meet our guidelines.
Acquisition Criteria
When candidate companies are being evaluated, we use the following, non-exclusive criteria for determining opportunities.
| ● | Size: We intend to target entities whose enterprise value is between approximately $750 million to $2 billion, with a focus on founder-led, late stage growth equity opportunities in the high-growth technology and direct-to-consumer ecosystems with defensible market positions. We believe these companies offer long term risk-adjusted return potential. |
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| ● | Founder-Led Businesses Where We Have Strong Relationships: Strong, experienced management team that could benefit from our extensive networks and insights with a track record of driving growth and profitability. Founders that have a long-term vision for the future of their business and want to build a lasting company. Companies where we have a unique relationship and can engage directly with the founder(s), potentially without participating in an auction. |
| ● | Large Addressable Markets Being Disrupted by Technology: We plan to identify high quality businesses run by exceptional teams pursuing large market opportunities. Target companies positioned in industries that are ripe for disruption and technological advancements. Sectors at an inflection point, where technology and disruptors will be uniquely advantaged to capture market share and future growth. Scalable platform in a market ripe for horizontal and / or vertical consolidation. |
| ● | Strong Growth And Attractive Margin Profile: Consistent organic revenue growth with scalable unit economics. Potential for future top line and margin expansion. Ability to generate attractive returns on capital and has a compelling use for capital to achieve their growth strategy. |
| ● | Opportunities Where Our Team Can Add Value: Sector where management can benefit from our extensive networks and insights. Taking advantage of our connections in both the public and private markets in order to generate firm value and future growth. Leverage industry experience, financial acumen and network of management team to identify additional operational and marketing improvement opportunities. |
These criteria are not intended to be exhaustive. Any evaluation relating to the merits of a particular initial business combination may be based, to the extent relevant, on these general guidelines as well as other considerations, factors and criteria that our management team may deem relevant. In the event that we decide to enter into our initial business combination with a target business that does not meet the above criteria and guidelines, we will disclose that the target business does not meet the above criteria in our stockholder communications related to our initial business combination, which would be in the form of proxy solicitation materials or tender offer documents that we would file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC.
Our Acquisition Process
In evaluating a prospective target business, we expect to conduct a thorough due diligence review that will encompass, among other things, meetings with incumbent management and employees, document reviews, inspection of facilities, as well as a review of financial and other information that will be made available to us. We will also utilize our operational and capital allocation experience.
We are not prohibited from pursuing an initial business combination with a company that is affiliated with our sponsor, officers or directors. In the event we seek to complete our initial business combination with a company that is affiliated with our sponsor, officers or directors, we, or a committee of independent directors, will obtain an opinion from an independent investment banking firm or an independent accounting firm that our initial business combination is fair to our company from a financial point of view. We are not required to obtain such an opinion in any other context.
Members of our management team indirectly own founder shares and/or private placement warrants following our initial public offering and, accordingly, may have a conflict of interest in determining whether a particular target business is an appropriate business with which to effectuate our initial business combination. Further, each of our officers and directors may have a conflict of interest with respect to evaluating a particular business combination if the retention or resignation of any such officers and directors was included by a target business as a condition to any agreement with respect to our initial business combination.
Each of our officers and directors presently has, and any of them in the future may have, additional, fiduciary or contractual obligations to other entities pursuant to which such officer or director is or will be required to present a business combination opportunity. Accordingly, if any of our officers or directors becomes aware of a business combination opportunity which is suitable for an entity to which he or she has then-current fiduciary or contractual obligations, he or she has honored his or her fiduciary or contractual obligations to present such opportunity to such entity. We do not believe, however, that the fiduciary duties or contractual obligations of our officers or directors materially affect our ability to complete our business combination. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that we renounce our interest in any corporate opportunity offered to any director or officer unless such opportunity is expressly offered to such person solely in his or her capacity as a director or officer of our company and such opportunity is one we are legally and contractually permitted to undertake and would otherwise be reasonable for us to pursue.
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Initial Business Combination
So long as our securities are then listed on the NYSE, our initial business combination must occur with one or more target businesses that together have an aggregate fair market value of at least 80% of the assets held in the trust account (excluding the deferred underwriting commissions and taxes payable on the income earned on the trust account) at the time of the agreement to enter into the initial business combination. If our board is not able to independently determine the fair market value of the target business or businesses, we will obtain an opinion from an independent investment banking firm or an independent accounting firm with respect to the satisfaction of such criteria.
We anticipate structuring our initial business combination so that the post-transaction company in which our public stockholders own shares will own or acquire 100% of the equity interests or assets of the target business or businesses. We may, however, structure our initial business combination such that the post-transaction company owns or acquires less than 100% of such interests or assets of the target business in order to meet certain objectives of the target management team or stockholders or for other reasons. However, we will only complete such business combination if the post-transaction company owns or acquires 50% or more of the outstanding voting securities of the target or otherwise acquires a controlling interest in the target sufficient for it not to be required to register as an investment company under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended, or the Investment Company Act. Even if the post-transaction company owns or acquires 50% or more of the voting securities of the target, our stockholders prior to the business combination may collectively own a minority interest in the post-transaction company, depending on valuations ascribed to the target and us in the business combination transaction. For example, we could pursue a transaction in which we issue a substantial number of new shares in exchange for all of the outstanding capital stock of a target. In this case, we would acquire a 100% controlling interest in the target. However, as a result of the issuance of a substantial number of new shares, our stockholders immediately prior to our initial business combination could own less than a majority of our outstanding shares subsequent to our initial business combination. If less than 100% of the equity interests or assets of a target business or businesses are owned or acquired by the post- transaction company, the portion of such business or businesses that is owned or acquired is what will be valued for purposes of the 80% of net assets test. If the business combination involves more than one target business, the 80% of net assets test will be based on the aggregate value of all of the target businesses and we will treat the target businesses together as the initial business combination for purposes of a tender offer or for seeking stockholder approval, as applicable. In addition, as long as our sponsor is controlled by Philip Krim, we have agreed not to enter into a definitive agreement regarding an initial business combination without the prior consent of our sponsor. If our securities are not then listed on the NYSE for whatever reason, we would no longer be required to meet the foregoing 80% of net asset test.
Our Management Team
Members of our management team are not obligated to devote any specific number of hours to our matters but they intend to devote as much of their time as they deem necessary to our affairs until we have completed our initial business combination. The amount of time that any member of our management team will devote in any time period will vary based on whether a target business has been selected for our initial business combination and the current stage of the business combination process.
We believe our management team’s operating and transaction experience and network of relationships with investment banks, private equity firms, professional advisors and senior industrial executives provide us with a substantial number of potential business combination targets. Over the course of their careers, the members of our management team have developed a broad network of contacts and corporate relationships around the world. This network has grown through the activities of our management team sourcing, acquiring and financing businesses, our management team’s relationships with sellers, financing sources and target management teams. Our management team is also highly experienced in executing transactions under varying economic and financial market conditions.
Status as a Public Company
We believe our structure makes us an attractive business combination partner to target businesses. As an existing public company, we offer a target business an alternative to the traditional initial public offering through a merger or other business combination. In this situation, the owners of the target business would exchange their shares of stock in the target business for shares of our stock or for a combination of shares of our stock and cash, allowing us to tailor the consideration to the specific needs of the sellers. Although there are various costs and obligations associated with being a public company, we believe certain target businesses will find this method a more certain and cost effective method to becoming a public company than the typical initial public offering. In a typical initial public offering, there are additional expenses incurred in marketing, road show and public reporting efforts that may not be present to the same extent in connection with a business combination with us.
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Furthermore, once a proposed business combination is completed, the target business will have effectively become public, whereas an initial public offering is always subject to the underwriter’s ability to complete the offering, as well as general market conditions, which could delay or prevent the offering from occurring or could have negative valuation consequences. Once public, we believe the target business would then have greater access to capital and an additional means of providing management incentives consistent with stockholders’ interests. It can offer further benefits by augmenting a company’s profile among potential new customers and vendors and aid in attracting talented employees.
We are an “emerging growth company,” as defined in Section 2(a) of the Securities Act, as modified by the JOBS Act. As such, we are eligible to take advantage of certain exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not emerging growth companies including, but not limited to, not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and exemptions from the requirements of holding a non-binding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. If some investors find our securities less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our securities and the prices of our securities may be more volatile.
In addition, Section 107 of the JOBS Act also provides that an emerging growth company can take advantage of the extended transition period provided in Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act for complying with new or revised accounting standards. In other words, an emerging growth company can delay the adoption of certain accounting standards until those standards would otherwise apply to private companies. We intend to take advantage of the benefits of this extended transition period.
We will remain an emerging growth company until the earlier of (1) the last day of the fiscal year (a) following the fifth anniversary of the completion of our initial public offering, (b) in which we have total annual gross revenue of at least $1.07 billion, or (c) in which we are deemed to be a large accelerated filer, which means the market value of our Class A common stock that is held by non-affiliates exceeds $700 million as of the end of the prior fiscal year’s second fiscal quarter, and (2) the date on which we have issued more than $1.0 billion in non-convertible debt securities during the prior three-year period.
Additionally, we are a “smaller reporting company” as defined in Item 10(f)(1) of Regulation S-K. Smaller reporting companies may take advantage of certain reduced disclosure obligations, including, among other things, providing only two years of audited financial statements. We will remain a smaller reporting company until the last day of the fiscal year in which (1) the market value of our Ordinary Shares held by non-affiliates exceeds $250 million as of the prior June 30 and/or (2) our annual revenues exceeded $100 million during such completed fiscal year and the market value of our Ordinary Shares held by non-affiliates exceeds $700 million as of the prior June 30.
Financial Position
As of December 31, 2021, we had marketable securities and cash of $334,441,194 held in the trust account, before payment of $11,697,550 in deferred underwriting fees. With the funds available, we offer a target business a variety of options such as creating a liquidity event for its owners, providing access to the expertise of our management team, providing capital for the potential growth and expansion of its operations or strengthening its balance sheet by reducing its debt or leverage ratio. Because we are able to complete our business combination using our cash, debt or equity securities, or a combination of the foregoing, we have the flexibility to use the most efficient combination that will allow us to tailor the consideration to be paid to the target business to fit its needs and desires.
Effecting our Initial Business Combination
We are not presently engaged in, and we will not engage in, any operations for an indefinite period of time following our initial public offering. We will effectuate our initial business combination using cash from the proceeds of our initial public offering and the private placement of the private placement warrants, our capital stock, debt or a combination of these as the consideration to be paid in our initial business combination. We may seek to complete our initial business combination with a company or business that may be financially unstable or in its early stages of development or growth, which would subject us to the numerous risks inherent in such companies and businesses.
If our initial business combination is paid for using equity or debt securities, or not all of the funds released from the trust account are used for payment of the consideration in connection with our business combination or used for redemptions of purchases of our Class A common stock, we may apply the balance of the cash released to us from the trust account for general corporate purposes, including for
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maintenance or expansion of operations of the post-transaction company, the payment of principal or interest due on indebtedness incurred in completing our initial business combination, to fund the purchase of other companies or for working capital.
We may seek to raise additional funds through a private offering of debt or equity securities in connection with the completion of our initial business combination, and we may effectuate our initial business combination using the proceeds of such offering rather than using the amounts held in the trust account. Subject to compliance with applicable securities laws, we would expect to complete such financing only simultaneously with the completion of our business combination. In the case of an initial business combination funded with assets other than the trust account assets, our tender offer documents or proxy materials disclosing the business combination would disclose the terms of the financing and, only if required by law, we would seek stockholder approval of such financing. There are no prohibitions on our ability to raise funds privately or through loans in connection with our initial business combination.
Sources of Target Businesses
We anticipate that target business candidates will be brought to our attention from various unaffiliated sources, including investment market participants, private equity groups, investment banking firms, consultants, accounting firms and large business enterprises. Target businesses may be brought to our attention by such unaffiliated sources as a result of being solicited by us through calls or mailings. These sources may also introduce us to target businesses in which they think we may be interested on an unsolicited basis, since many of these sources will have read this report and know what types of businesses we are targeting. Our officers and directors, as well as their affiliates, may also bring to our attention target business candidates that they become aware of through their business contacts as a result of formal or informal inquiries or discussions they may have, as well as attending trade shows or conventions. In addition, we expect to receive a number of proprietary deal flow opportunities that would not otherwise necessarily be available to us as a result of the business relationships of our officers and directors. While we do not presently anticipate engaging the services of professional firms or other individuals that specialize in business acquisitions on any formal basis, we may engage these firms or other individuals in the future, in which event we may pay a finder’s fee, consulting fee or other compensation to be determined in an arm’s length negotiation based on the terms of the transaction. We will engage a finder only to the extent our management determines that the use of a finder may bring opportunities to us that may not otherwise be available to us or if finders approach us on an unsolicited basis with a potential transaction that our management determines is in our best interest to pursue. Payment of finder’s fees is customarily tied to completion of a transaction, in which case any such fee will be paid out of the funds held in the trust account. In no event, however, will our sponsor or any of our existing officers or directors, or any entity with which they are affiliated, be paid any finder’s fee, consulting fee or other compensation prior to, or for any services they render in order to effectuate, the completion of our initial business combination (regardless of the type of transaction that it is). We have agreed to pay an affiliate of our sponsor a total of $10,000 per month for office space, utilities and secretarial and administrative support and to reimburse our sponsor for any out-of-pocket expenses related to identifying, investigating and completing an initial business combination. Some of our officers and directors may enter into employment or consulting agreements with the post-transaction company following our initial business combination. The presence or absence of any such fees or arrangements will not be used as a criterion in our selection process of an acquisition candidate.
We are not prohibited from pursuing an initial business combination with a business combination target that is affiliated with our sponsor, officers or directors or making the acquisition through a joint venture or other form of shared ownership with our sponsor, officers or directors. In the event we seek to complete our initial business combination with a business combination target that is affiliated with our sponsor, officers or directors, we, or a committee of independent directors, would obtain an opinion from an independent investment banking firm or an independent accounting firm that such an initial business combination is fair to our company from a financial point of view. We are not required to obtain such an opinion in any other context.
If any of our officers or directors becomes aware of a business combination opportunity that falls within the line of business of any entity to which he or she has pre-existing fiduciary or contractual obligations, he or she may be required to present such business combination opportunity to such entity prior to presenting such business combination opportunity to us. Our officers and directors currently have certain relevant fiduciary duties or contractual obligations that may take priority over their duties to us.
Selection of a Target Business and Structuring of Our Initial Business Combination
Our initial business combination must occur with one or more target businesses that together have an aggregate fair market value of at least 80% of our assets held in the trust account (excluding the deferred underwriting commissions and taxes payable on the income earned on the trust account) at the time of the agreement to enter into the initial business combination. The fair market value of the target or targets will be determined by our board of directors based upon one or more standards generally accepted by the financial community,
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such as discounted cash flow valuation or value of comparable businesses. If our board is not able to independently determine the fair market value of the target business or businesses, we will obtain an opinion from an independent investment banking firm or from an independent accounting firm, with respect to the satisfaction of such criteria. We do not intend to purchase multiple businesses in unrelated industries in conjunction with our initial business combination. Subject to this requirement, our management will have virtually unrestricted flexibility in identifying and selecting one or more prospective target businesses, although we will not be permitted to effectuate our initial business combination with another blank check company or a similar company with nominal operations.
In any case, we will only complete an initial business combination in which we own or acquire 50% or more of the outstanding voting securities of the target or otherwise acquire a controlling interest in the target sufficient for it not to be required to register as an investment company under the Investment Company Act. If we own or acquire less than 100% of the equity interests or assets of a target business or businesses, the portion of such business or businesses that are owned or acquired by the post-transaction company is what will be valued for purposes of the 80% of net assets test. There is no basis for investors in our initial public offering to evaluate the possible merits or risks of any target business with which we may ultimately complete our business combination.
To the extent we effect our business combination with a company or business that may be financially unstable or in its early stages of development or growth we may be affected by numerous risks inherent in such company or business. Although our management will endeavor to evaluate the risks inherent in a particular target business, we cannot assure you that we will properly ascertain or assess all significant risk factors.
In evaluating a prospective target business, we expect to conduct a thorough due diligence review, which will encompass, among other things, meetings with incumbent management and employees, document reviews, interviews of customers and suppliers, inspection of facilities, as well as a review of financial and other information that will be made available to us.
Lack of Business Diversification
For an indefinite period of time after the completion of our initial business combination, the prospects for our success may depend entirely on the future performance of a single business. Unlike other entities that have the resources to complete business combinations with multiple entities in one or several industries, it is probable that we will not have the resources to diversify our operations and mitigate the risks of being in a single line of business. By completing our business combination with only a single business, our lack of diversification may:
| ● | subject us to negative economic, competitive and regulatory developments, any or all of which may have a substantial adverse impact on the particular industry in which we operate after our initial business combination; and |
| ● | cause us to depend on the marketing and sale of a single product or limited number of products or services. |
Limited Ability to Evaluate the Target’s Management Team
Although we intend to closely scrutinize the management of a prospective target business when evaluating the desirability of effecting our business combination with that business, our assessment of the target business’ management may not prove to be correct. In addition, the future management may not have the necessary skills, qualifications or abilities to manage a public company. Furthermore, the future role of members of our management team, if any, in the target business cannot presently be stated with any certainty or may otherwise be subject to change. While it is possible that one or more of our directors will remain associated in some capacity with us following our business combination, it is unlikely that any of them will devote their full efforts to our affairs subsequent to our business combination. Moreover, we cannot assure you that members of our management team will have significant experience or knowledge relating to the operations of the particular target business.
We cannot assure you that any of our key personnel will remain in senior management or advisory positions with the combined company. The determination as to whether any of our key personnel will remain with the combined company will be made at the time of our initial business combination.
Following a business combination, we may seek to recruit additional managers to supplement the incumbent management of the target business. We cannot assure you that we will have the ability to recruit additional managers, or that those additional managers will have the requisite skills, knowledge or experience necessary to enhance the incumbent management.
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Stockholders May Not Have the Ability to Approve Our Initial Business Combination
We may conduct redemptions without a stockholder vote pursuant to the tender offer rules of the SEC, subject to the provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and bylaws. However, we will seek stockholder approval if it is required by law or applicable stock exchange rule, or we may decide to seek stockholder approval for business or other legal reasons.
Presented in the table below is a graphic explanation of the types of initial business combinations we may consider and whether stockholder approval is currently required under Delaware law for each such transaction.
Type of Transaction |
| Whether Stockholder Approval is Required |
Purchase of assets |
| No |
Purchase of stock of target not involving a merger with the company |
| No |
Merger of target into a subsidiary of the company |
| No |
Merger of the company with a target |
| Yes |
Under the NYSE’s listing rules, stockholder approval would be required for our initial business combination if, for example:
| ● | we issue (other than in a public offering) shares of Class A common stock that will either (a) be equal to or in excess of 20% of the number of shares of our Class A common stock then outstanding or (b) have voting power equal to or in excess of 20% of the voting power then outstanding; |
| ● | any of our directors, officers or substantial stockholders (as defined by the NYSE rules) has a 5% or greater interest, directly or indirectly, in the target business or assets to be acquired and if the number of shares of Class A common stock to be issued, or if the number of shares of Class A common stock into which the securities may be convertible or exercisable, exceeds either (a) 1% of the number of shares of Class A common stock or 1% of the voting power outstanding before the issuance in the case of any of our directors and officers or (b) 5% of the number of shares of common stock or 5% of the voting power outstanding before the issuance in the case of any substantial stockholders; or |
| ● | the issuance or potential issuance of common stock will result in our undergoing a change of control. |
The decision as to whether we will seek stockholder approval of a proposed business combination in those instances in which stockholder approval is not required by law or applicable stock exchange rules will be made by us, solely in our discretion, and will be based on business and legal reasons, which include a variety of factors, including, but not limited to:
| ● | the timing of the transaction, including in the event we determine stockholder approval would require additional time and there is either not enough time to seek stockholder approval or doing so would place the company at a disadvantage in the transaction or result in other additional burdens on the company; |
| ● | the expected cost of holding a stockholder vote; |
| ● | the risk that the stockholders would fail to approve the proposed business combination; |
| ● | other time and budget constraints of the company; and |
| ● | additional legal complexities of a proposed business combination that would be time-consuming and burdensome to present to stockholders. |
Permitted Purchases of Our Securities
In the event we seek stockholder approval of our business combination and we do not conduct redemptions in connection with our business combination pursuant to the tender offer rules, our sponsor, directors, officers, Advisors or their affiliates may purchase shares in privately negotiated transactions or in the open market either prior to or following the completion of our initial business combination.
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However, they have no current commitments, plans or intentions to engage in such transactions and have not formulated any terms or conditions for any such transactions. None of the funds in the trust account will be used to purchase shares in such transactions. They will be restricted from making any such purchases when they are in possession of any material non-public information not disclosed to the seller or if such purchases are prohibited by Regulation M under the Exchange Act. Such a purchase may include a contractual acknowledgement that such stockholder, although still the record holder of our shares is no longer the beneficial owner thereof and therefore agrees not to exercise its redemption rights. Subsequent to the consummation of our initial public offering, we will adopt an insider trading policy which will require insiders to refrain from purchasing shares during certain blackout periods and when they are in possession of any material non-public information and to clear all trades with our legal counsel prior to execution. We cannot currently determine whether our insiders will make such purchases pursuant to a Rule 10b5-1 plan, as such purchases will be dependent upon several factors, including but not limited to, the timing and size of such purchases. Depending on such circumstances, our insiders may either make such purchases pursuant to a Rule 10b5-1 plan or determine that such a plan is not necessary.
In the event that our sponsor, directors, officers, Advisors or their affiliates purchase shares in privately negotiated transactions from public stockholders who have already elected to exercise their redemption rights, such selling stockholders would be required to revoke their prior elections to redeem their shares. We do not currently anticipate that such purchases, if any, would constitute a tender offer subject to the tender offer rules under the Exchange Act or a going-private transaction subject to the going-private rules under the Exchange Act; however, if the purchasers determine at the time of any such purchases that the purchases are subject to such rules, the purchasers will comply with such rules.
The purpose of such purchases would be to (i) vote such shares in favor of the business combination and thereby increase the likelihood of obtaining stockholder approval of the business combination or (ii) to satisfy a closing condition in an agreement with a target that requires us to have a minimum net worth or a certain amount of cash at the closing of our business combination, where it appears that such requirement would otherwise not be met. This may result in the completion of our business combination that may not otherwise have been possible.
In addition, if such purchases are made, the public “float” of our common stock may be reduced and the number of beneficial holders of our securities may be reduced, which may make it difficult to maintain or obtain the quotation, listing or trading of our securities on a national securities exchange.
Our sponsor, officers, directors and/or their affiliates anticipate that they may identify the stockholders with whom our sponsor, officers, directors or their affiliates may pursue privately negotiated purchases by either the stockholders contacting us directly or by our receipt of redemption requests submitted by stockholders following our mailing of proxy materials in connection with our initial business combination. To the extent that our sponsor, officers, directors, Advisors or their affiliates enter into a private purchase, they would identify and contact only potential selling stockholders who have expressed their election to redeem their shares for a pro rata share of the trust account or vote against the business combination. Our sponsor, officers, directors, Advisors or their affiliates will only purchase shares if such purchases comply with Regulation M under the Exchange Act and the other federal securities laws.
Any purchases by our sponsor, officers, directors and/or their affiliates who are affiliated purchasers under Rule 10b-18 under the Exchange Act will only be made to the extent such purchases are able to be made in compliance with Rule 10b-18, which is a safe harbor from liability for manipulation under Section 9(a)(2) and Rule 10b-5 of the Exchange Act. Rule 10b-18 has certain technical requirements that must be complied with in order for the safe harbor to be available to the purchaser. Our sponsor, officers, directors and/or their affiliates will not make purchases of common stock if the purchases would violate Section 9(a)(2) or Rule 10b-5 of the Exchange Act.
Redemption Rights for Public Stockholders Upon Completion of Our Initial Business Combination
We will provide our public stockholders with the opportunity to redeem all or a portion of their shares of Class A common stock upon the completion of our initial business combination at a per-share price, payable in cash, equal to the aggregate amount then on deposit in the trust account as of two business days prior to the consummation of the initial business combination including interest earned on the funds held in the trust account and not previously released to us to pay our franchise and income taxes, divided by the number of then outstanding public shares, subject to the limitations described herein. The amount in the trust account is initially anticipated to be approximately $10.00 per public share. The per-share amount we will distribute to investors who properly redeem their shares will not be reduced by the deferred underwriting commissions we will pay to the underwriter. The redemption rights will include the requirement that a beneficial holder must identify itself in order to validly redeem its shares. Our sponsor, officers and directors have entered into a
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letter agreement with us, pursuant to which they have agreed (i) to waive their redemption rights with respect to any founder shares and public shares held by them in connection with the completion of our initial business combination and a stockholder vote to approve an amendment to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation (A) that would modify the substance or timing of our obligation to provide holders of shares of Class A common stock the right to have their shares redeemed in connection with our initial business combination or to redeem 100% of our public shares if we do not complete our initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering or (B) with respect to any other provision relating to the rights of holders of our Class A common stock and (ii) to waive their rights to liquidating distributions from the trust account with respect to any founder shares they hold if we fail to consummate an initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering (although they will be entitled to liquidating distributions from the trust account with respect to any public shares they hold if we fail to complete our initial business combination within the prescribed time frame).
Manner of Conducting Redemptions
We will provide our public stockholders with the opportunity to redeem all or a portion of their shares of Class A common stock upon the completion of our initial business combination either (i) in connection with a stockholder meeting called to approve the business combination or (ii) by means of a tender offer. The decision as to whether we will seek stockholder approval of a proposed business combination or conduct a tender offer will be made by us, solely in our discretion, and will be based on a variety of factors described in the section “— Stockholders May Not Have the Ability to Approve Our Initial Business Combination,” such as the timing of the transaction and whether the terms of the transaction would require us to seek stockholder approval under the law or stock exchange listing requirement. Asset acquisitions and stock purchases would not typically require stockholder approval while direct mergers with our company where we do not survive and any transactions where we issue more than 20% of our outstanding common stock or seek to amend our amended and restated certificate of incorporation would require stockholder approval. If we structure a business combination transaction with a target company in a manner that requires stockholder approval, we will not have discretion as to whether to seek a stockholder vote to approve the proposed business combination. We intend to conduct redemptions without a stockholder vote pursuant to the tender offer rules of the SEC unless stockholder approval is required by law or stock exchange listing requirements or we choose to seek stockholder approval for business or other legal reasons.
If a stockholder vote is not required and we do not decide to hold a stockholder vote for business or other legal reasons, we will, pursuant to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation:
| ● | conduct the redemptions pursuant to Rule 13e-4 and Regulation 14E of the Exchange Act, which regulate issuer tender offers; and |
| ● | file tender offer documents with the SEC prior to completing our initial business combination which contain substantially the same financial and other information about the initial business combination and the redemption rights as is required under Regulation 14A of the Exchange Act, which regulates the solicitation of proxies. |
Upon the public announcement of our business combination, we or our sponsor will terminate any plan established in accordance with Rule 10b5-1 to purchase shares of our Class A common stock in the open market if we elect to redeem our public shares through a tender offer, to comply with Rule 14e-5 under the Exchange Act.
In the event we conduct redemptions pursuant to the tender offer rules, our offer to redeem will remain open for at least 20 business days, in accordance with Rule 14e-1(a) under the Exchange Act, and we will not be permitted to complete our initial business combination until the expiration of the tender offer period. In addition, the tender offer will be conditioned on public stockholders not tendering more than a specified number of public shares which are not purchased by our sponsor, which number will be based on the requirement that we may not redeem public shares in an amount that would cause our net tangible assets to be less than $5,000,001 or any greater net tangible asset or cash requirement which may be contained in the agreement relating to our initial business combination. If public stockholders tender more shares than we have offered to purchase, we will withdraw the tender offer and not complete the initial business combination.
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If, however, stockholder approval of the transaction is required by law or stock exchange listing requirement, or we decide to obtain stockholder approval for business or other legal reasons, we will, pursuant to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation:
| ● | conduct the redemptions in conjunction with a proxy solicitation pursuant to Regulation 14A of the Exchange Act, which regulates the solicitation of proxies, and not pursuant to the tender offer rules; and |
| ● | file proxy materials with the SEC. |
In the event that we seek stockholder approval of our initial business combination, we will distribute proxy materials and, in connection therewith, provide our public stockholders with the redemption rights described above upon completion of the initial business combination.
If we seek stockholder approval, we will complete our initial business combination only if a majority of the outstanding shares of common stock voted are voted in favor of the business combination. A quorum for such meeting will consist of the holders present in person or by proxy of shares of outstanding capital stock of the company representing a majority of the voting power of all outstanding shares of capital stock of the company entitled to vote at such meeting. Our initial stockholders will count toward this quorum and have agreed to vote their founder shares and any public shares purchased during or after our initial public offering in favor of our initial business combination. For purposes of seeking approval of the majority of our outstanding shares of common stock voted, non-votes will have no effect on the approval of our initial business combination once a quorum is obtained. As a result, in addition to our initial stockholders’ founder shares, we would need 12,533,089, or 37.5%, of the 33,421,570 public shares sold in our initial public offering to be voted in favor of a transaction (assuming all outstanding shares are voted) in order to have our initial business combination approved. We will give at least 10 days prior written notice of any such meeting, if required, at which a vote shall be taken to approve our initial business combination. These quorum and voting thresholds, and the voting agreements of our initial stockholders, may make it more likely that we will consummate our initial business combination. Each public stockholder may elect to redeem its public shares irrespective of whether they vote for or against the proposed transaction.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that in no event will we redeem our public shares in an amount that would cause our net tangible assets to be less than $5,000,001 or any greater net tangible asset or cash requirement which may be contained in the agreement relating to our initial business combination. For example, the proposed business combination may require: (i) cash consideration to be paid to the target or its owners; (ii) cash to be transferred to the target for working capital or other general corporate purposes; or (iii) the retention of cash to satisfy other conditions in accordance with the terms of the proposed business combination. In the event the aggregate cash consideration we would be required to pay for all shares of Class A common stock that are validly submitted for redemption plus any amount required to satisfy cash conditions pursuant to the terms of the proposed business combination exceed the aggregate amount of cash available to us, we will not complete the business combination or redeem any shares, and all shares of Class A common stock submitted for redemption will be returned to the holders thereof.
Limitation on Redemption Upon Completion of Our Initial Business Combination if We Seek Stockholder Approval
Notwithstanding the foregoing, if we seek stockholder approval of our initial business combination and we do not conduct redemptions in connection with our business combination pursuant to the tender offer rules, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that a public stockholder, together with any affiliate of such stockholder or any other person with whom such stockholder is acting in concert or as a “group” (as defined under Section 13 of the Exchange Act), will be restricted from seeking redemption rights with respect to more than an aggregate of 15% of the shares sold in our initial public offering, which we refer to as the “Excess Shares,” without our prior consent. We believe this restriction will discourage stockholders from accumulating large blocks of shares, and subsequent attempts by such holders to use their ability to exercise their redemption rights against a proposed business combination as a means to force us or our management to purchase their shares at a significant premium to the then-current market price or on other undesirable terms. Absent this provision, a public stockholder holding more than an aggregate of 15% of the shares sold in our initial public offering could threaten to exercise its redemption rights if such holder’s shares are not purchased by us or our management at a premium to the then-current market price or on other undesirable terms. By limiting our stockholders’ ability to redeem no more than 15% of the shares sold in our initial public offering, we believe we will limit the ability of a small group of stockholders to unreasonably attempt to block our ability to complete our business combination, particularly in connection with a business combination with a target that requires as a closing condition that we have a minimum net worth or a certain amount of cash.
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However, we would not be restricting our stockholders’ ability to vote all of their shares (including Excess Shares) for or against our business combination.
Tendering Stock Certificates in Connection with a Tender Offer or Redemption Rights
As described above, we intend to require our public stockholders seeking to exercise their redemption rights, whether they are record holders or hold their shares in “street name,” to, at the holder’s option, either deliver their stock certificates to our transfer agent or deliver their shares to our transfer agent electronically using The Depository Trust Company’s DWAC (Deposit/Withdrawal At Custodian) system, prior to the date set forth in the proxy materials or tender offer documents, as applicable. In the case of proxy materials, this date may be up to two business days prior to the date on which the vote on the proposal to approve the initial business combination is initially to be held. In addition, if we conduct redemptions in connection with a stockholder vote, we intend to require a public stockholder seeking redemption of its public shares to also submit a written request for redemption to our transfer agent two business days prior to the initially scheduled vote in which the name and other identifying information of the beneficial owner of such shares is included. The proxy materials or tender offer documents, as applicable, that we will furnish to holders of our public shares in connection with our initial business combination will indicate whether we are requiring public stockholders to satisfy such delivery requirements. Accordingly, a public stockholder would have up to two business days prior to the initially scheduled vote on the initial business combination if we distribute proxy materials, or from the time we send out our tender offer materials until the close of the tender offer period, as applicable, to submit or tender its shares if it wishes to seek to exercise its redemption rights. In the event that a stockholder fails to comply with these or any other procedures disclosed in the proxy or tender offer materials, as applicable, its shares may not be redeemed. Given the relatively short exercise period, it is advisable for stockholders to use electronic delivery of their public shares.
There is a nominal cost associated with the above-referenced process and the act of certificating the shares or delivering them through the DWAC system. The transfer agent will typically charge the broker submitting or tendering shares a fee of approximately $80.00 and it would be up to the broker whether or not to pass this cost on to the redeeming holder. However, this fee would be incurred regardless of whether or not we require holders seeking to exercise redemption rights to submit or tender their shares. The need to deliver shares is a requirement of exercising redemption rights regardless of the timing of when such delivery must be effectuated.
Any request to redeem such shares, once made, may be withdrawn at any time up to the date set forth in the proxy materials or tender offer documents, as applicable. Furthermore, if a holder of a public share delivered its certificate in connection with an election of redemption rights and subsequently decides prior to the applicable date not to elect to exercise such rights, such holder may simply request that the transfer agent return the certificate (physically or electronically). It is anticipated that the funds to be distributed to holders of our public shares electing to redeem their shares will be distributed promptly after the completion of our initial business combination.
If our initial business combination is not approved or completed for any reason, then our public stockholders who elected to exercise their redemption rights would not be entitled to redeem their shares for the applicable pro rata share of the trust account. In such case, we will promptly return any certificates delivered by public holders who elected to redeem their shares.
If our initial proposed initial business combination is not completed, we may continue to try to complete an initial business combination with a different target until 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering.
Redemption of Public Shares and Liquidation if no Initial Business Combination
Our sponsor, executive officers and directors have agreed that we will have only 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering to complete our initial business combination. If we are unable to complete our business combination within such 24-month period, we will: (i) cease all operations except for the purpose of winding up; (ii) as promptly as reasonably possible but not more than ten business days thereafter, redeem the public shares, at a per-share price, payable in cash, equal to the aggregate amount then on deposit in the trust account including interest earned on the funds held in the trust account and not previously released to us to pay our franchise and income taxes (less up to $100,000 of interest to pay dissolution expenses), divided by the number of then outstanding public shares, which redemption will completely extinguish public stockholders’ rights as stockholders (including the right to receive further liquidating distributions, if any), subject to applicable law; and (iii) as promptly as reasonably possible following such redemption, subject to the approval of our remaining stockholders and our board of directors, dissolve and liquidate, subject in each case to our obligations under Delaware law to provide for claims of creditors and the requirements of other applicable law. There will be no
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redemption rights or liquidating distributions with respect to our warrants, which will expire worthless if we fail to complete our business combination within the 24-month time period.
Our sponsor, officers and directors have entered into a letter agreement with us, pursuant to which they have waived their rights to liquidating distributions from the trust account with respect to any founder shares held by them if we fail to complete our initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering. However, if our initial stockholders acquire public shares in or after our initial public offering, they will be entitled to liquidating distributions from the trust account with respect to such public shares if we fail to complete our initial business combination within the allotted 24-month time period.
Our sponsor, executive officers and directors have agreed, pursuant to a written agreement with us, that they will not propose any amendment to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation that would modify the substance or timing of our obligation to provide holders of our Class A common stock the right to have their shares redeemed in connection with our initial business combination or to redeem 100% of our public shares if we do not complete our initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering or with respect to any other provision relating to the rights of holders of our Class A common stock unless we provide our public stockholders with the opportunity to redeem their shares of Class A common stock upon approval of any such amendment at a per-share price, payable in cash, equal to the aggregate amount then on deposit in the trust account, including interest (which interest shall be net of taxes payable) divided by the number of the then outstanding public shares. However, we may not redeem our public shares in an amount that would cause our net tangible assets to be less than $5,000,001 upon consummation of our initial business combination.
We expect that all costs and expenses associated with implementing our plan of dissolution, as well as payments to any creditors, will be funded from amounts remaining out of the $479,694 held outside the trust account as of December 31, 2021, although we cannot assure you that there will be sufficient funds for such purpose. However, if those funds are not sufficient to cover the costs and expenses associated with implementing our plan of dissolution, to the extent that there is any interest accrued in the trust account not required to pay our franchise and income taxes on interest income earned on the trust account balance, we may request the trustee to release to us an additional amount of up to $100,000 of such accrued interest to pay those costs and expenses.
If we were to expend all of the net proceeds of our initial public offering and the sale of the private placement warrants, other than the proceeds deposited in the trust account, and without taking into account interest, if any, earned on the trust account, the per-share redemption amount received by stockholders upon our dissolution would be approximately $10.00.
The proceeds deposited in the trust account could, however, become subject to the claims of our creditors which would have higher priority than the claims of our public stockholders. We cannot assure you that the actual per-share redemption amount received by stockholders will not be substantially less than $10.00. Under Section 281(b) of the DGCL, our plan of dissolution must provide for all claims against us to be paid in full or make provision for payments to be made in full, as applicable, if there are sufficient assets. These claims must be paid or provided for before we make any distribution of our remaining assets to our stockholders. While we intend to pay such amounts, if any, we cannot assure you that we will have funds sufficient to pay or provide for all creditors’ claims.
Although we will seek to have all vendors, service providers (other than our independent registered public accounting firm), prospective target businesses or other entities with which we do business execute agreements with us waiving any right, title, interest or claim of any kind in or to any monies held in the trust account for the benefit of our public stockholders, there is no guarantee that they will execute such agreements or even if they execute such agreements that they would be prevented from bringing claims against the trust account including but not limited to fraudulent inducement, breach of fiduciary responsibility or other similar claims, as well as claims challenging the enforceability of the waiver, in each case in order to gain an advantage with respect to a claim against our assets, including the funds held in the trust account. If any third party refuses to execute an agreement waiving such claims to the monies held in the trust account, our management will perform an analysis of the alternatives available to it and will only enter into an agreement with a third party that has not executed a waiver if management believes that such third party’s engagement would be significantly more beneficial to us than any alternative. Examples of possible instances where we may engage a third party that refuses to execute a waiver include the engagement of a third party consultant whose particular expertise or skills are believed by management to be significantly superior to those of other consultants that would agree to execute a waiver or in cases where management is unable to find a service provider willing to execute a waiver.
In addition, there is no guarantee that such entities will agree to waive any claims they may have in the future as a result of, or arising out of, any negotiations, contracts or agreements with us and will not seek recourse against the trust account for any reason. Our sponsor
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has agreed that it will be liable to us if and to the extent any claims by a vendor for services rendered or products sold to us, or a prospective target business with which we have discussed entering into a transaction agreement, reduce the amount of funds in the trust account to below (i) $10.00 per public share or (ii) such lesser amount per public share held in the trust account as of the date of the liquidation of the trust account, due to reductions in value of the trust assets, in each case net of the interest that may be withdrawn to pay our tax obligations, except as to any claims by a third party who executed a waiver of any and all rights to seek access to the trust account and except as to any claims under our indemnity of the underwriter of our initial public offering against certain liabilities, including liabilities under the Securities Act. In the event that an executed waiver is deemed to be unenforceable against a third party, then our sponsor will not be responsible to the extent of any liability for such third party claims. We have not independently verified whether our sponsor has sufficient funds to satisfy its indemnity obligations and believe that our sponsor’s only assets are securities of our company. We have not asked our sponsor to reserve for such indemnification obligations. Therefore, we cannot assure you that our sponsor would be able to satisfy those obligations. As a result, if any such claims were successfully made against the trust account, the funds available for our initial business combination and redemptions could be reduced to less than $10.00 per public share. In such event, we may not be able to complete our initial business combination, and you would receive such lesser amount per share in connection with any redemption of your public shares. None of our officers will indemnify us for claims by third parties including, without limitation, claims by vendors and prospective target businesses.
In the event that the proceeds in the trust account are reduced below (i) $10.00 per public share or (ii) such lesser amount per public share held in the trust account as of the date of the liquidation of the trust account, due to reductions in value of the trust assets, in each case net of the amount of interest which may be withdrawn to pay our tax obligations, and our sponsor asserts that it is unable to satisfy its indemnification obligations or that it has no indemnification obligations related to a particular claim, our independent directors would determine whether to take legal action against our sponsor to enforce its indemnification obligations. While we currently expect that our independent directors would take legal action on our behalf against our sponsor to enforce its indemnification obligations to us, it is possible that our independent directors in exercising their business judgment may choose not to do so if, for example, the cost of such legal action is deemed by the independent directors to be too high relative to the amount recoverable or if the independent directors determine that a favorable outcome is not likely. We have not asked our sponsor to reserve for such indemnification obligations and we cannot assure you that our sponsor would be able to satisfy those obligations. Accordingly, we cannot assure you that due to claims of creditors the actual value of the per-share redemption price will not be less than $10.00 per public share.
We will seek to reduce the possibility that our sponsor will have to indemnify the trust account due to claims of creditors by endeavoring to have all vendors, service providers (other than our independent registered public accounting firm), prospective target businesses or other entities with which we do business execute agreements with us waiving any right, title, interest or claim of any kind in or to monies held in the trust account. Our sponsor will also not be liable as to any claims under our indemnity of the underwriter of our initial public offering against certain liabilities, including liabilities under the Securities Act. As of December 31, 2022, we had access to up to $479,694 of cash held outside the trust account to pay any such potential claims (including costs and expenses incurred in connection with our liquidation, currently estimated to be no more than approximately $100,000). In the event that we liquidate and it is subsequently determined that the reserve for claims and liabilities is insufficient, stockholders who received funds from our trust account could be liable for claims made by creditors.
Under the DGCL, stockholders may be held liable for claims by third parties against a corporation to the extent of distributions received by them in a dissolution. The pro rata portion of our trust account distributed to our public stockholders upon the redemption of our public shares in the event we do not complete our business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering may be considered a liquidating distribution under Delaware law. If the corporation complies with certain procedures set forth in Section 280 of the DGCL intended to ensure that it makes reasonable provision for all claims against it, including a 60-day notice period during which any third-party claims can be brought against the corporation, a 90-day period during which the corporation may reject any claims brought, and an additional 150-day waiting period before any liquidating distributions are made to stockholders, any liability of stockholders with respect to a liquidating distribution is limited to the lesser of such stockholder’s pro rata share of the claim or the amount distributed to the stockholder, and any liability of the stockholder would be barred after the third anniversary of the dissolution.
Furthermore, if the pro rata portion of our trust account distributed to our public stockholders upon the redemption of our public shares in the event we do not complete our business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering, is not considered a liquidating distribution under Delaware law and such redemption distribution is deemed to be unlawful, then pursuant to Section 174 of the DGCL, the statute of limitations for claims of creditors could then be six years after the unlawful redemption distribution, instead of three years, as in the case of a liquidating distribution. If we are unable to complete our business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering, we will: (i) cease all operations except for the purpose of winding up;
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(ii) as promptly as reasonably possible but not more than ten business days thereafter, redeem the public shares, at a per-share price, payable in cash, equal to the aggregate amount then on deposit in the trust account including interest earned on the funds held in the trust account and not previously released to us to pay our franchise and income taxes (less up to $100,000 of interest to pay dissolution expenses), divided by the number of then outstanding public shares, which redemption will completely extinguish public stockholders’ rights as stockholders (including the right to receive further liquidating distributions, if any), subject to applicable law; and (iii) as promptly as reasonably possible following such redemption, subject to the approval of our remaining stockholders and our board of directors, dissolve and liquidate, subject in each case to our obligations under Delaware law to provide for claims of creditors and the requirements of other applicable law. Accordingly, it is our intention to redeem our public shares as soon as reasonably possible following our 24th month and, therefore, we do not intend to comply with those procedures. As such, our stockholders could potentially be liable for any claims to the extent of distributions received by them (but no more) and any liability of our stockholders may extend well beyond the third anniversary of such date.
Because we will not be complying with Section 280, Section 281(b) of the DGCL requires us to adopt a plan, based on facts known to us at such time that will provide for our payment of all existing and pending claims or claims that may be potentially brought against us within the subsequent 10 years. However, because we are a blank check company, rather than an operating company, and our operations will be limited to searching for prospective target businesses to acquire, the only likely claims to arise would be from our vendors (such as lawyers, investment bankers, etc.) or prospective target businesses. As described above, pursuant to the obligation contained in our underwriting agreement, we will seek to have all vendors, service providers (other than our independent registered public accounting firm), prospective target businesses or other entities with which we do business execute agreements with us waiving any right, title, interest or claim of any kind in or to any monies held in the trust account. As a result of this obligation, the claims that could be made against us are significantly limited and the likelihood that any claim that would result in any liability extending to the trust account is remote. Further, our sponsor may be liable only to the extent necessary to ensure that the amounts in the trust account are not reduced below (i) $10.00 per public share or (ii) such lesser amount per public share held in the trust account as of the date of the liquidation of the trust account, due to reductions in value of the trust assets, in each case net of the amount of interest withdrawn to pay our franchise and income taxes and will not be liable as to any claims under our indemnity of the underwriter of our initial public offering against certain liabilities, including liabilities under the Securities Act. In the event that an executed waiver is deemed to be unenforceable against a third party, our sponsor will not be responsible to the extent of any liability for such third-party claims.
If we file a bankruptcy petition or an involuntary bankruptcy petition is filed against us that is not dismissed, the proceeds held in the trust account could be subject to applicable bankruptcy law, and may be included in our bankruptcy estate and subject to the claims of third parties with priority over the claims of our stockholders. To the extent any bankruptcy claims deplete the trust account, we cannot assure you we will be able to return $10.00 per share to our public stockholders. Additionally, if we file a bankruptcy petition or an involuntary bankruptcy petition is filed against us that is not dismissed, any distributions received by stockholders could be viewed under applicable debtor/creditor and/or bankruptcy laws as either a “preferential transfer” or a “fraudulent conveyance.” As a result, a bankruptcy court could seek to recover all amounts received by our stockholders. Furthermore, our board may be viewed as having breached its fiduciary duty to our creditors and/or may have acted in bad faith, and thereby exposing itself and our company to claims of punitive damages, by paying public stockholders from the trust account prior to addressing the claims of creditors. We cannot assure you that claims will not be brought against us for these reasons.
Our public stockholders will be entitled receive funds from the trust account only upon the earliest to occur of: (a) the completion of our initial business combination, (b) the redemption of any public shares properly tendered in connection with a stockholder vote to amend our amended and restated certificate of incorporation (i) to modify the substance or timing of our obligation to provide holders of our Class A common stock the right to have their shares redeemed in connection with our initial business combination or to redeem 100% of our public shares if we do not complete our initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering or (ii) with respect to any other provisions relating to the rights of holders of our Class A common stock, and (c) the redemption of our public shares if we have not consummated our business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering, subject to applicable law. These provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, like all provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, may be amended with a stockholder vote.
Competition
In identifying, evaluating and selecting a target business for our business combination, we have encountered and may continue to encounter intense competition from other entities having a business objective similar to ours, including other blank check companies, private equity groups and leveraged buyout funds, and operating businesses seeking strategic acquisitions. Many of these entities are
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well established and have extensive experience identifying and effecting business combinations directly or through affiliates. Moreover, many of these competitors possess greater financial, technical, human and other resources than we do. Our ability to acquire larger target businesses is limited by our available financial resources. This inherent limitation gives others an advantage in pursuing the acquisition of a target business. Furthermore, our obligation to pay cash in connection with our public stockholders who exercise their redemption rights may reduce the resources available to us for our initial business combination and our outstanding warrants, and the future dilution they potentially represent, may not be viewed favorably by certain target businesses. Either of these factors may place us at a competitive disadvantage in successfully negotiating an initial business combination.
Facilities
Our executive offices are located at 1545 Courtney Ave, Los Angeles, California 90046, and our telephone number is (646) 432-0610. Our executive offices are provided to us by an affiliate of our sponsor. We have agreed to pay (and have paid) an affiliate of our sponsor a total of $10,000 per month for office space, utilities and secretarial and administrative support. We consider our current office space adequate for our current operations.
Employees
We currently have two officers. Members of our management team are not obligated to devote any specific number of hours to our matters but they intend to devote as much of their time as they deem necessary to our affairs until we have completed our initial business combination.
The amount of time that any such person will devote in any time period will vary based on whether a target business has been selected for our initial business combination and the current stage of the business combination process.
Periodic Reporting and Financial Information
We have registered our units, Class A common stock and warrants under the Exchange Act and have reporting obligations, including the requirement that we file annual, quarterly and current reports with the SEC. In accordance with the requirements of the Exchange Act, our annual reports contain financial statements audited and reported on by our independent registered public accounting firm.
We will provide stockholders with audited financial statements of the prospective target business as part of the tender offer materials or proxy solicitation materials sent to stockholders to assist them in assessing the target business. In all likelihood, these financial statements will need to be prepared in accordance with GAAP or IFRS, depending on the circumstances and the historical financial statements may be required to be audited in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. These financial statement requirements may limit the pool of potential target businesses we may conduct an initial business combination with because some targets may be unable to provide such financial statements in time for us to disclose such financial statements in accordance with federal proxy rules and complete our initial business combination within the prescribed time frame. We cannot assure you that any particular target business identified by us as a potential acquisition candidate will have financial statements prepared in accordance with such requirements or that the potential target business will be able to prepare its financial statements in accordance with such requirements. To the extent that this requirement cannot be met, we may not be able to acquire the proposed target business. While this may limit the pool of potential acquisition candidates, we do not believe that this limitation will be material.
We are required to evaluate our internal controls over financial reporting procedures as of the fiscal year ending December 31, 2022 as required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Only in the event we are deemed to be a large accelerated filer or an accelerated filer, and no longer qualify as an emerging growth company, will we be required to have our internal control over financial reporting procedures audited. A target company may not be in compliance with the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act regarding adequacy of their internal controls over financial reporting. The development of the internal controls of any such entity to achieve compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act may increase the time and costs necessary to complete any such acquisition.
ITEM 1A.RISK FACTORS
An investment in our securities involves a high degree of risk. You should consider carefully all of the risks described below, together with the other information contained in this Report and the prospectus associated with our initial public offering, before making a decision to invest in our securities. If any of the following events occur, our business, financial condition and operating results may be
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materially adversely affected. In that event, the trading price of our securities could decline, and you could lose all or part of your investment.
Risks Relating to our Search for, and Consummation of or Inability to Consummate, a Business Combination
We are a blank check company with no operating history and no revenues, and you have no basis on which to evaluate our ability to achieve our business objective.
We are a blank check company with no operating results. Because we lack an operating history, you have no basis upon which to evaluate our ability to achieve our business objective of completing our initial business combination with one or more target businesses. We have no plans, arrangements or understandings with any prospective target business concerning a business combination and may be unable to complete our business combination. If we fail to complete our business combination, we will never generate any operating revenues.
Past performance by our management team or our Advisors is not indicative of future performance of an investment in us.
Information regarding performance by, or businesses associated with, our management team or our Advisors, is presented for informational purposes only. Any past experience and performance of our management team or our Advisors is not a guarantee either: (1) that we will be able to successfully identify a suitable candidate for our initial business combination; or (2) of any results with respect to any initial business combination we may consummate. You should not rely on the historical record of the performance of our management team or our Advisors as being indicative of the future performance of an investment in us or the returns we will, or are likely to, generate going forward.
Our public stockholders may not be afforded an opportunity to vote on our proposed business combination, which means we may complete our initial business combination even though a majority of our public stockholders do not support such a combination.
We may not hold a stockholder vote to approve our initial business combination unless the business combination would require stockholder approval under applicable law or stock exchange listing requirements or if we decide to hold a stockholder vote for business or other legal reasons. Except as required by law, the decision as to whether we will seek stockholder approval of a proposed business combination or will allow stockholders to sell their shares to us in a tender offer will be made by us, solely in our discretion, and is based on a variety of factors, such as the timing of the transaction and whether the terms of the transaction would otherwise require us to seek stockholder approval. Accordingly, we may complete our initial business combination even if holders of a majority of our public shares do not approve of the business combination we complete.
If we seek stockholder approval of our initial business combination, our initial stockholders have agreed to vote in favor of such initial business combination, regardless of how our public stockholders vote.
Our initial stockholders have agreed to vote their founder shares, as well as any public shares purchased during or after our initial public offering, in favor of our initial business combination. As a result, in addition to our initial stockholders’ founder shares, we would need 12,533,089, or 37.5%, of the 33,421,570 public shares sold in our initial public offering to be voted in favor of a transaction (assuming all outstanding shares are voted) in order to have our initial business combination approved. Our initial stockholders own shares representing 20% of our outstanding shares of common stock immediately following the completion of our initial public offering. Accordingly, if we seek stockholder approval of our initial business combination, it is more likely that the necessary stockholder approval will be received than would be the case if our initial stockholders agreed to vote their founder shares in accordance with the majority of the votes cast by our public stockholders.
Your only opportunity to affect the investment decision regarding a potential business combination will be limited to the exercise of your right to redeem your shares from us for cash, unless we seek stockholder approval of the business combination.
At the time of your investment in us, you will not be provided with an opportunity to evaluate the specific merits or risks of one or more target businesses. Since our board of directors may complete a business combination without seeking stockholder approval, public stockholders may not have the right or opportunity to vote on the business combination, unless we seek such stockholder vote. Accordingly, if we do not seek stockholder approval, your only opportunity to affect the investment decision regarding a potential
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business combination may be limited to exercising your redemption rights within the period of time (which will be at least 20 business days) set forth in our tender offer documents mailed to our public stockholders in which we describe our initial business combination.
The ability of our public stockholders to redeem their shares for cash may make our financial condition unattractive to potential business combination targets, which may make it difficult for us to enter into a business combination with a target.
We may seek to enter into a business combination transaction agreement with a prospective target that requires as a closing condition that we have a minimum net worth or a certain amount of cash. If too many public stockholders exercise their redemption rights, we would not be able to meet such closing condition and, as a result, would not be able to proceed with the business combination. Furthermore, in no event will we redeem our public shares in an amount that would cause our net tangible assets to be less than $5,000,001. Consequently, if accepting all properly submitted redemption requests would cause our net tangible assets to be less than $5,000,001 upon consummation of our initial business combination or such greater amount necessary to satisfy a closing condition as described above, we would not proceed with such redemption and the related business combination and may instead search for an alternate business combination. Prospective targets will be aware of these risks and, thus, may be reluctant to enter into a business combination transaction with us.
The ability of our public stockholders to exercise redemption rights with respect to a large number of our shares may not allow us to complete the most desirable business combination or optimize our capital structure.
At the time we enter into an agreement for our initial business combination, we will not know how many stockholders may exercise their redemption rights, and therefore will need to structure the transaction based on our expectations as to the number of shares that will be submitted for redemption. If our business combination agreement requires us to use a portion of the cash in the trust account to pay the purchase price, or requires us to have a minimum amount of cash at closing, we will need to reserve a portion of the cash in the trust account to meet such requirements, or arrange for third party financing. In addition, if a larger number of shares are submitted for redemption than we initially expected, we may need to restructure the transaction to reserve a greater portion of the cash in the trust account or arrange for third party financing. Raising additional third party financing may involve dilutive equity issuances or the incurrence of indebtedness at higher than desirable levels. The above considerations may limit our ability to complete the most desirable business combination available to us or optimize our capital structure. The amount of the deferred underwriting commissions payable to the underwriter will not be adjusted for any shares that are redeemed in connection with a business combination. The per-share amount we will distribute to stockholders who properly exercise their redemption rights will not be reduced by the deferred underwriting commission and after such redemptions, the per-share value of shares held by non-redeeming stockholders will reflect our obligation to pay the deferred underwriting commissions.
The ability of our public stockholders to exercise redemption rights with respect to a large number of our shares could increase the probability that our initial business combination would not be consummated and that you would have to wait for liquidation in order to redeem your stock.
If our business combination agreement requires us to use a portion of the cash in the trust account to pay the purchase price, or requires us to have a minimum amount of cash at closing, the probability that our initial business combination would not be consummated is increased. If our initial business combination is unsuccessful, you would not receive your pro rata portion of the trust account until we liquidate the trust account. If you are in need of immediate liquidity, you could attempt to sell your stock in the open market; however, at such time our stock may trade at a discount to the pro rata amount per share in the trust account. In either situation, you may suffer a material loss on your investment or lose the benefit of funds expected in connection with our redemption until we liquidate or you are able to sell your stock in the open market.
The requirement that we complete our initial business combination within the prescribed time frame may give potential target businesses leverage over us in negotiating a business combination and may decrease our ability to conduct due diligence on potential business combination targets as we approach our dissolution deadline, which could undermine our ability to complete our business combination on terms that would produce value for our stockholders.
Any potential target business with which we enter into negotiations concerning a business combination will be aware that we must complete our initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering. Consequently, such target business may obtain leverage over us in negotiating a business combination, knowing that if we do not complete our initial business
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combination with that particular target business, we may be unable to complete our initial business combination with any target business. This risk will increase as we get closer to the timeframe described above. In addition, we may have limited time to conduct due diligence and may enter into our initial business combination on terms that we would have rejected upon a more comprehensive investigation.
Our search for a business combination, and any target business with which we ultimately consummate a business combination, may be materially adversely affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and the status of debt and equity markets.
In December 2019, a novel strain of coronavirus was reported to have surfaced in Wuhan, China, which has and is continuing to spread throughout the world, including the United States. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern.” On January 31, 2020, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar II declared a public health emergency for the United States to aid the U.S. healthcare community in responding to COVID-19, and on March 11, 2020 the World Health Organization characterized the outbreak as a “pandemic”. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a widespread health crisis that could adversely affect the economies and financial markets worldwide, and the business of any potential target business with which we consummate a business combination could be materially and adversely affected. Furthermore, we may be unable to complete a business combination if continued concerns relating to COVID-19 continue to restrict travel, limit the ability to have meetings with potential investors or the target company’s personnel, vendors and services providers are unavailable to negotiate and consummate a transaction in a timely manner. The extent to which COVID-19 impacts our search for a business combination will depend on future developments, which are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted, including new information which may emerge concerning the severity of COVID-19 and the actions to contain COVID-19 or treat its impact, among others. If the disruptions posed by COVID-19 or other matters of global concern continue for an extensive period of time, our ability to consummate a business combination, or the operations of a target business with which we ultimately consummate a business combination, may be materially adversely affected. In addition, our ability to consummate a transaction may be dependent on the ability to raise equity and debt financing which may be impacted by COVID-19 and other events, including as a result of increased market volatility, decreased market liquidity and third-party financing being unavailable on terms acceptable to us or at all.
We may not be able to complete our initial business combination within the prescribed time frame, in which case we would cease all operations except for the purpose of winding up and we would redeem our public shares and liquidate, in which case our public stockholders may only receive $10.00 per share, or less than such amount in certain circumstances, and our warrants will expire worthless.
Our sponsor, executive officers and directors have agreed that we must complete our initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering. We may not be able to find a suitable target business and complete our initial business combination within such time period. If we have not completed our initial business combination within such time period, we will: (i) cease all operations except for the purpose of winding up; (ii) as promptly as reasonably possible but not more than ten business days thereafter, redeem the public shares, at a per-share price, payable in cash, equal to the aggregate amount then on deposit in the trust account including interest earned on the funds held in the trust account and not previously released to us to pay our franchise and income taxes (less up to $100,000 of interest to pay dissolution expenses), divided by the number of then outstanding public shares, which redemption will completely extinguish public stockholders’ rights as stockholders (including the right to receive further liquidating distributions, if any), subject to applicable law; and (iii) as promptly as reasonably possible following such redemption, subject to the approval of our remaining stockholders and our board of directors, dissolve and liquidate, subject in each case to our obligations under Delaware law to provide for claims of creditors and the requirements of other applicable law. In such case, our public stockholders may only receive $10.00 per share, and our warrants will expire worthless. In certain circumstances, our public stockholders may receive less than $10.00 per share on the redemption of their shares.
If we are unable to complete an initial business combination within the 24-month period from the closing of our initial public offering, we may seek an amendment to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to extend the period of time we have to complete an initial business combination beyond 24 months. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation requires that such an amendment be approved by holders of 65% of our outstanding common stock.
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If we seek stockholder approval of our initial business combination, our sponsor, directors, officers, advisors and their affiliates may elect to purchase shares from public stockholders, which may influence a vote on a proposed business combination and reduce the public “float” of our Class A common stock.
If we seek stockholder approval of our initial business combination and we do not conduct redemptions in connection with our business combination pursuant to the tender offer rules, our sponsor, directors, officers, advisors or their affiliates may purchase shares in privately negotiated transactions or in the open market either prior to or following the completion of our initial business combination, although they are under no obligation to do so. Such a purchase may include a contractual acknowledgement that such stockholder, although still the record holder of our shares is no longer the beneficial owner thereof and therefore agrees not to exercise its redemption rights. In the event that our sponsor, directors, officers, advisors or their affiliates purchase shares in privately negotiated transactions from public stockholders who have already elected to exercise their redemption rights, such selling stockholders would be required to revoke their prior elections to redeem their shares. The purpose of such purchases could be to vote such shares in favor of the business combination and thereby increase the likelihood of obtaining stockholder approval of the business combination, or to satisfy a closing condition in an agreement with a target that requires us to have a minimum net worth or a certain amount of cash at the closing of our business combination, where it appears that such requirement would otherwise not be met. This may result in the completion of our business combination that may not otherwise have been possible.
In addition, if such purchases are made, the public “float” of our Class A common stock and the number of beneficial holders of our securities may be reduced, possibly making it difficult to obtain or maintain the quotation, listing or trading of our securities on a national securities exchange.
If a stockholder fails to receive notice of our offer to redeem our public shares in connection with our business combination, or fails to comply with the procedures for tendering its shares, such shares may not be redeemed.
We will comply with the tender offer rules or proxy rules, as applicable, when conducting redemptions in connection with our business combination. Despite our compliance with these rules, if a stockholder fails to receive our tender offer or proxy materials, as applicable, such stockholder may not become aware of the opportunity to redeem its shares. In addition, the proxy solicitation or tender offer materials, as applicable, that we will furnish to holders of our public shares in connection with our initial business combination will indicate the applicable delivery requirements, which will include the requirement that a beneficial holder must identify itself in order to validly redeem its shares. For example, we may require our public stockholders seeking to exercise their redemption rights, whether they are record holders or hold their shares in “street name,” to either tender their certificates to our transfer agent prior to the date set forth in the tender offer documents or proxy materials mailed to such holders, or up to two business days prior to the initially scheduled vote on the proposal to approve the business combination in the event we distribute proxy materials, or to deliver their shares to the transfer agent electronically. In the event that a stockholder fails to comply with these or any other procedures, its shares may not be redeemed.
As the number of special purpose acquisition companies evaluating targets increases, attractive targets may become scarcer and there may be more competition for attractive targets. This could increase the cost of our initial business combination and could even result in our inability to find a target or to consummate an initial business combination.
In recent years, the number of special purpose acquisition companies that have been formed has increased substantially. Many potential targets for special purpose acquisition companies have already entered into an initial business combination, and there are still many special purpose acquisition companies seeking targets for their initial business combination, as well as many such companies currently in registration. As a result, at times, fewer attractive targets may be available, and it may require ore time, more effort and more resources to identify a suitable target and to consummate an initial business combination.
In addition, because there are more special purpose acquisition companies seeking to enter into an initial business combination with available targets, the competition for available targets with attractive fundamentals or business models may increase, which could cause target companies to demand improved financial terms. Attractive deals could also become scarcer for other reasons, such as economic or industry sector downturns, geopolitical tensions including between the U.S. and China and between Russia and Ukraine, or increases in the cost of additional capital needed to close business combinations or operate targets post-business combination. This could increase the cost of, delay or otherwise complicate or frustrate our ability to find and consummate an initial business combination, and may result in our inability to consummate an initial business combination on terms favorable to our investors altogether.
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You will not have any rights or interests in funds from the trust account, except under certain limited circumstances. To liquidate your investment, therefore, you may be forced to sell your public shares or warrants, potentially at a loss.
Our public stockholders will be entitled to receive funds from the trust account only upon the earliest to occur of: (a) the completion of our initial business combination, (b) the redemption of any public shares properly tendered in connection with a stockholder vote to amend our amended and restated certificate of incorporation (i) to modify the substance or timing of our obligation to provide holders of our Class A common stock the right to have their shares redeemed in connection with our initial business combination or to redeem 100% of our public shares if we do not complete our initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering or (ii) with respect to any other provisions relating to the rights of holders of our Class A common stock, and (c) the redemption of our public shares if we have not consummated our business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering, subject to applicable law. In addition, if we are unable to complete an initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering for any reason, compliance with Delaware law may require that we submit a plan of dissolution to our then-existing stockholders for approval prior to the distribution of the proceeds held in our trust account. In that case, public stockholders may be forced to wait beyond 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering before they receive funds from our trust account. In no other circumstances will a public stockholder have any right or interest of any kind in the trust account. Accordingly, to liquidate your investment, you may be forced to sell your public shares or warrants, potentially at a loss.
Because of our limited resources and the significant competition for business combination opportunities, it may be more difficult for us to complete our initial business combination. If we are unable to complete our initial business combination, our public stockholders may receive only approximately $10.00 per share on our redemption of our public shares, or less than such amount in certain circumstances, and our warrants will expire worthless.
We expect to encounter intense competition from other entities having a business objective similar to ours, including private investors (which may be individuals or investment partnerships), other blank check companies and other entities, domestic and international, competing for the types of businesses we intend to acquire. Many of these individuals and entities are well-established and have extensive experience in identifying and effecting, directly or indirectly, acquisitions of companies operating in or providing services to various industries. Many of these competitors possess greater technical, human and other resources or more local industry knowledge than we do and our financial resources will be relatively limited when contrasted with those of many of these competitors. While we believe there are numerous target businesses we could potentially acquire with the net proceeds of our initial public offering and the sale of the private placement warrants, our ability to compete with respect to the acquisition of certain target businesses that are sizable will be limited by our available financial resources. This inherent competitive limitation gives others an advantage in pursuing the acquisition of certain target businesses. Furthermore, because we are obligated to pay cash for the shares of Class A common stock which our public stockholders redeem in connection with our initial business combination, target companies will be aware that this may reduce the resources available to us for our initial business combination.
This may place us at a competitive disadvantage in successfully negotiating a business combination. If we are unable to complete our initial business combination, our public stockholders may receive only approximately $10.00 per share on the liquidation of our trust account and our warrants will expire worthless. In certain circumstances, our public stockholders may receive less than $10.00 per share upon our liquidation.
If the net proceeds of our initial public offering and the sale of the private placement warrants not being held in the trust account are insufficient to allow us to operate for at least the next 24 months, we may be unable to complete our initial business combination, in which case our public stockholders may only receive $10.00 per share, or less than such amount in certain circumstances, and our warrants will expire worthless.
The funds available to us outside of the trust account may not be sufficient to allow us to operate for at least the 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering, assuming that our initial business combination is not completed during that time. We believe that the funds available to us outside of the trust account will be sufficient to allow us to operate for the 24 months following the closing of our initial public offering; however, we cannot assure you that our estimate is accurate. Of the funds available to us, we could use a portion of the funds available to us to pay fees to consultants to assist us with our search for a target business. We could also use a portion of the funds as a down payment or to fund a “no-shop” provision (a provision in letters of intent designed to keep target businesses from “shopping” around for transactions with other companies on terms more favorable to such target businesses) with respect to a particular proposed business combination. If we are unable to complete our initial business combination, our public stockholders may
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receive only approximately $10.00 per share on the liquidation of our trust account and our warrants will expire worthless. In certain circumstances, our public stockholders may receive less than $10.00 per share upon our liquidation.
If third parties bring claims against us, the proceeds held in the trust account could be reduced and the per-share redemption amount received by stockholders may be less than $10.00 per share.
Our placing of funds in the trust account may not protect those funds from third-party claims against us. Although we will seek to have all vendors, service providers (other than our independent registered public accounting firm), prospective target businesses or other entities with which we do business execute agreements with us waiving any right, title, interest or claim of any kind in or to any monies held in the trust account for the benefit of our public stockholders, such parties may not execute such agreements, or even if they execute such agreements they may not be prevented from bringing claims against the trust account, including, but not limited to, fraudulent inducement, breach of fiduciary responsibility or other similar claims, as well as claims challenging the enforceability of the waiver, in each case in order to gain advantage with respect to a claim against our assets, including the funds held in the trust account. If any third party refuses to execute an agreement waiving such claims to the monies held in the trust account, our management will perform an analysis of the alternatives available to it and will only enter into an agreement with a third party that has not executed a waiver if management believes that such third party’s engagement would be significantly more beneficial to us than any alternative. The underwriter of our initial public offering will not execute an agreement with us waiving such claims to the monies in the trust account.
Examples of possible instances where we may engage a third party that refuses to execute a waiver include the engagement of a third party consultant whose particular expertise or skills are believed by management to be significantly superior to those of other consultants that would agree to execute a waiver or in cases where management is unable to find a service provider willing to execute a waiver. In addition, there is no guarantee that such entities will agree to waive any claims they may have in the future as a result of, or arising out of, any negotiations, contracts or agreements with us and will not seek recourse against the trust account for any reason. Upon redemption of our public shares, if we are unable to complete our business combination within the prescribed timeframe, or upon the exercise of a redemption right in connection with our business combination, we will be required to provide for payment of claims of creditors that were not waived that may be brought against us within the 10 years following redemption. Accordingly, the per-share redemption amount received by public stockholders could be less than the $10.00 per share initially held in the trust account, due to claims of such creditors. Our sponsor has agreed that it will be liable to us if and to the extent any claims by a vendor for services rendered or products sold to us, or a prospective target business with which we have discussed entering into a transaction agreement, reduce the amount of funds in the trust account to below (i) $10.00 per public share or (ii) such lesser amount per public share held in the trust account as of the date of the liquidation of the trust account due to reductions in the value of the trust assets, in each case net of the interest that may be withdrawn to pay our franchise and income taxes. This liability will not apply with respect to any claims by a third party who executed a waiver of any and all rights to seek access to the trust account and except as to any claims under our indemnity of the underwriter of our initial public offering against certain liabilities, including liabilities under the Securities Act. Moreover, in the event that an executed waiver is deemed to be unenforceable against a third party, then our sponsor will not be responsible to the extent of any liability for such third party claims. We have not independently verified whether our sponsor has sufficient funds to satisfy its indemnity obligations and believe that our sponsor’s only assets are securities of our company. We have not asked our sponsor to reserve for such indemnification obligations. Therefore, our sponsor may not be able to satisfy those obligations. As a result, if any such claims were successfully made against the trust account, the funds available for our initial business combination and redemptions could be reduced to less than $10.00 per public share. In such event, we may not be able to complete our initial business combination, and you would receive such lesser amount per share in connection with any redemption of your public shares. None of our officers will indemnify us for claims by third parties including, without limitation, claims by vendors and prospective target businesses.
Our stockholders may be held liable for claims by third parties against us to the extent of distributions received by them upon redemption of their shares.
Under the DGCL, stockholders may be held liable for claims by third parties against a corporation to the extent of distributions received by them in a dissolution. The pro rata portion of our trust account distributed to our public stockholders upon the redemption of our public shares in the event we do not complete our initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering may be considered a liquidating distribution under Delaware law. If a corporation complies with certain procedures set forth in Section 280 of the DGCL intended to ensure that it makes reasonable provision for all claims against it, including a 60-day notice period during which any third-party claims can be brought against the corporation, a 90-day period during which the corporation may reject any claims brought, and an additional 150-day waiting period before any liquidating distributions are made to stockholders, any liability of stockholders with respect to a liquidating distribution is limited to the lesser of such stockholder’s pro rata share of the claim or the
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amount distributed to the stockholder, and any liability of the stockholder would be barred after the third anniversary of the dissolution. However, it is our intention to redeem our public shares as soon as reasonably possible following the 24th month from the closing of our initial public offering in the event we do not complete our business combination and, therefore, we do not intend to comply with the foregoing procedures.
Because we will not be complying with Section 280, Section 281(b) of the DGCL requires us to adopt a plan, based on facts known to us at such time that will provide for our payment of all existing and pending claims or claims that may be potentially brought against us within the 10 years following our dissolution. However, because we are a blank check company, rather than an operating company, and our operations will be limited to searching for prospective target businesses to acquire, the only likely claims to arise would be from our vendors (such as lawyers, investment bankers, etc.) or prospective target businesses. If our plan of distribution complies with Section 281(b) of the DGCL, any liability of stockholders with respect to a liquidating distribution is limited to the lesser of such stockholder’s pro rata share of the claim or the amount distributed to the stockholder, and any liability of the stockholder would likely be barred after the third anniversary of the dissolution. We cannot assure you that we will properly assess all claims that may be potentially brought against us. As such, our stockholders could potentially be liable for any claims to the extent of distributions received by them (but no more) and any liability of our stockholders may extend beyond the third anniversary of such date. Furthermore, if the pro rata portion of our trust account distributed to our public stockholders upon the redemption of our public shares in the event we do not complete our initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering is not considered a liquidating distribution under Delaware law and such redemption distribution is deemed to be unlawful, then pursuant to Section 174 of the DGCL, the statute of limitations for claims of creditors could then be six years after the unlawful redemption distribution, instead of three years, as in the case of a liquidating distribution.
We may not hold an annual meeting of stockholders until after the consummation of our initial business combination, which could delay the opportunity for our stockholders to elect directors.
In accordance with the NYSE corporate governance requirements, we are not required to hold an annual meeting until one year after our first fiscal year end following our listing on the NYSE. Under Section 211(b) of the DGCL, we are, however, required to hold an annual meeting of stockholders for the purposes of electing directors in accordance with our bylaws unless such election is made by written consent in lieu of such a meeting. We may not hold an annual meeting of stockholders to elect new directors prior to the consummation of our initial business combination, and thus we may not be in compliance with Section 211(b) of the DGCL, which requires an annual meeting. Therefore, if our stockholders want us to hold an annual meeting prior to the consummation of our initial business combination, they may attempt to force us to hold one by submitting an application to the Delaware Court of Chancery in accordance with Section 211(c) of the DGCL.
Because we are not limited to a particular industry, sector or any specific target businesses with which to pursue our initial business combination, you will be unable to ascertain the merits or risks of any particular target business’ operations.
Although we expect to focus our search for a target business in the industrial sector, we may seek to complete a business combination with an operating company in any industry or sector. However, we are not, under our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, permitted to effectuate our business combination with another blank check company or similar company with nominal operations. To the extent we complete our business combination, we may be affected by numerous risks inherent in the business operations with which we combine. For example, if we combine with a financially unstable business or an entity lacking an established record of revenues or earnings, we may be affected by the risks inherent in the business and operations of a financially unstable or a development stage entity. Although our officers and directors will endeavor to evaluate the risks inherent in a particular target business, we cannot assure you that we will properly ascertain or assess all of the significant risk factors or that we will have adequate time to complete due diligence. Furthermore, some of these risks may be outside of our control and leave us with no ability to control or reduce the chances that those risks will adversely impact a target business. We also cannot assure you that an investment in our securities will ultimately prove to be more favorable to investors than a direct investment, if such opportunity were available, in a business combination target. Accordingly, any securityholders who choose to remain stockholders following the business combination could suffer a reduction in the value of their securities. Such stockholders are unlikely to have a remedy for such reduction in value.
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We may seek acquisition opportunities in industries or sectors which may or may not be outside of our management’s area of expertise.
We may consider a business combination outside of our management’s area of expertise if a business combination candidate is presented to us and we determine that such candidate offers an attractive acquisition opportunity for our company. Although our management will endeavor to evaluate the risks inherent in any particular business combination candidate, we cannot assure you that we will adequately ascertain or assess all of the significant risk factors. We also cannot assure you that an investment in our units will not ultimately prove to be less favorable to investors in our initial public offering than a direct investment, if an opportunity were available, in a business combination candidate. In the event we elect to pursue an acquisition outside of the areas of our management’s expertise, our management’s expertise may not be directly applicable to its evaluation or operation, and the information contained in our initial prospectus regarding the areas of our management’s expertise would not be relevant to an understanding of the business that we elect to acquire. As a result, our management may not be able to adequately ascertain or assess all of the significant risk factors. Accordingly, any stockholders who choose to remain stockholders following our business combination could suffer a reduction in the value of their shares. Such stockholders are unlikely to have a remedy for such reduction in value.
We do not have a specified maximum redemption threshold. The absence of such a redemption threshold may make it possible for us to complete a business combination with which a substantial majority of our stockholders do not agree.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation does not provide a specified maximum redemption threshold, except that in no event will we redeem our public shares in an amount that would cause our net tangible assets to be less than $5,000,001 or any greater net tangible asset or cash requirement which may be contained in the agreement relating to our initial business combination. As a result, we may be able to complete our business combination even though a substantial majority of our public stockholders do not agree with the transaction and have redeemed their shares or, if we seek stockholder approval of our initial business combination and do not conduct redemptions in connection with our business combination pursuant to the tender offer rules, have entered into privately negotiated agreements to sell their shares to our sponsor, officers, directors, Advisors or their affiliates. In the event the aggregate cash consideration we would be required to pay for all shares of Class A common stock that are validly submitted for redemption plus any amount required to satisfy cash conditions pursuant to the terms of the proposed business combination exceed the aggregate amount of cash available to us, we will not complete the business combination or redeem any shares, all shares of Class A common stock submitted for redemption will be returned to the holders thereof, and we instead may search for an alternate business combination.
In order to effectuate our initial business combination, we may seek to amend our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or governing instruments in a manner that will make it easier for us to complete our initial business combination but that our stockholders may not support.
In order to effectuate a business combination, blank check companies have, in the recent past, amended various provisions of their charters and modified governing instruments, including their warrant agreements. For example, blank check companies have amended the definition of business combination, increased redemption thresholds and extended the time to consummate an initial business combination and, with respect to their warrants, amended their warrant agreements to require the warrants to be exchanged for cash and/or other securities. We cannot assure you that we will not seek to amend our charter or governing instruments or extend the time to consummate an initial business combination in order to effectuate our initial business combination.
Our initial stockholders may exert a substantial influence on actions requiring a stockholder vote, potentially in a manner that you do not support.
Our initial stockholders own shares representing 20% of our issued and outstanding shares of common stock. Accordingly, they may exert a substantial influence on actions requiring a stockholder vote, potentially in a manner that you do not support, including amendments to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and approval of major corporate transactions. If our initial stockholders purchase any additional shares of common stock in the aftermarket or in privately negotiated transactions, this would increase their control. Factors that would be considered in making such additional purchases would include consideration of the current trading price of our Class A common stock. In addition, our board of directors, whose members were elected by our initial stockholders, is and will be divided into three classes, each of which will generally serve for a term of three years with only one class of directors being elected in each year. We may not hold an annual meeting of stockholders to elect new directors prior to the completion of our business combination, in which case all of the current directors will continue in office until at least the completion of the business combination. If there is an annual meeting, as a consequence of our “staggered” board of directors, only a minority of the board of
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directors will be considered for election and our initial stockholders, because of their ownership position, will have considerable influence regarding the outcome. In addition, prior to the completion of an initial business combination, holders of a majority of our founder shares may remove a member of the board of directors for any reason. In addition, as long as our sponsor is controlled by our founders, we have agreed not to enter into a definitive agreement regarding an initial business combination without the prior consent of our sponsor. Accordingly, our initial stockholders will continue to exert control at least until the completion of our business combination.
You are not entitled to protections normally afforded to investors of many other blank check companies.
Since the net proceeds of our initial public offering and the sale of the private placement warrants are intended to be used to complete an initial business combination with a target business, we may be deemed to be a “blank check” company under the United States securities laws. However, because we have net tangible assets in excess of $5,000,000 upon the successful completion of our initial public offering and the sale of the private placement warrants and have filed a Current Report on Form 8-K, including an audited balance sheet demonstrating this fact, we are exempt from rules promulgated by the SEC to protect investors in blank check companies, such as Rule 419. Accordingly, investors are not be afforded the benefits or protections of those rules. Among other things, this means our units are tradable and we have a longer period of time to complete our business combination than do companies subject to Rule 419. Moreover, if our initial public offering were subject to Rule 419, that rule would prohibit the release of any interest earned on funds held in the trust account to us unless and until the funds in the trust account were released to us in connection with our completion of an initial business combination.
We may be required to take write-downs or write-offs, restructuring and impairment or other charges that could have a significant negative effect on our financial condition, results of operations and our stock price, which could cause you to lose some or all of your investment.
Even if we conduct extensive due diligence on a target business with which we combine, we cannot assure you that this diligence will surface all material issues that may be present inside a particular target business, that it would be possible to uncover all material issues through a customary amount of due diligence, or that factors outside of the target business and outside of our control will not later arise. As a result of these factors, we may be forced to later write-down or write-off assets, restructure our operations, or incur impairment or other charges that could result in our reporting losses. Even if our due diligence successfully identifies certain risks, unexpected risks may arise and previously known risks may materialize in a manner not consistent with our preliminary risk analysis. Even though these charges may be non-cash items and not have an immediate impact on our liquidity, the fact that we report charges of this nature could contribute to negative market perceptions about us or our securities. In addition, charges of this nature may cause us to violate net worth or other covenants to which we may be subject as a result of assuming pre-existing debt held by a target business or by virtue of our obtaining post-combination debt financing. Accordingly, any stockholders who choose to remain stockholders following the business combination could suffer a reduction in the value of their shares. Such stockholders are unlikely to have a remedy for such reduction in value unless they are able to successfully claim that the reduction was due to the breach by our officers or directors of a duty of care or other fiduciary duty owed to such stockholders, or if they are able to successfully bring a private claim under securities laws that the tender offer materials or proxy statement related to our initial business combination contained an actionable material misstatement or material omission.
Our directors may decide not to enforce the indemnification obligations of our sponsor, resulting in a reduction in the amount of funds in the trust account available for distribution to our public stockholders.
In the event that the proceeds in the trust account are reduced below the lesser of (i) $10.00 per public share or (ii) such lesser amount per share held in the trust account as of the date of the liquidation of the trust account due to reductions in the value of the trust assets, in each case net of the interest which may be withdrawn to pay our franchise and income taxes, and our sponsor asserts that it is unable to satisfy its obligations or that it has no indemnification obligations related to a particular claim, our independent directors would determine whether to take legal action against our sponsor to enforce its indemnification obligations.
While we currently expect that our independent directors would take legal action on our behalf against our sponsor to enforce its indemnification obligations to us, it is possible that our independent directors in exercising their business judgment may choose not to do so if, for example, the cost of such legal action is deemed by the independent directors to be too high relative to the amount recoverable or if the independent directors determine that a favorable outcome is not likely. If our independent directors choose not to enforce these indemnification obligations, the amount of funds in the trust account available for distribution to our public stockholders may be reduced below $10.00 per share.
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If, after we distribute the proceeds in the trust account to our public stockholders, we file a bankruptcy petition or an involuntary bankruptcy petition is filed against us that is not dismissed, a bankruptcy court may seek to recover such proceeds, and we and our board may be exposed to claims of punitive damages.
If, after we distribute the proceeds in the trust account to our public stockholders, we file a bankruptcy petition or an involuntary bankruptcy petition is filed against us that is not dismissed, any distributions received by stockholders could be viewed under applicable debtor/creditor and/or bankruptcy laws as either a “preferential transfer” or a “fraudulent conveyance.” As a result, a bankruptcy court could seek to recover all amounts received by our stockholders. In addition, our board of directors may be viewed as having breached its fiduciary duty to our creditors and/or having acted in bad faith, thereby exposing itself and us to claims of punitive damages, by paying public stockholders from the trust account prior to addressing the claims of creditors.
If, before distributing the proceeds in the trust account to our public stockholders, we file a bankruptcy petition or an involuntary bankruptcy petition is filed against us that is not dismissed, the claims of creditors in such proceeding may have priority over the claims of our stockholders and the per-share amount that would otherwise be received by our stockholders in connection with our liquidation may be reduced.
If, before distributing the proceeds in the trust account to our public stockholders, we file a bankruptcy petition or an involuntary bankruptcy petition is filed against us that is not dismissed, the proceeds held in the trust account could be subject to applicable bankruptcy law, and may be included in our bankruptcy estate and subject to the claims of third parties with priority over the claims of our stockholders. To the extent any bankruptcy claims deplete the trust account, the per-share amount that would otherwise be received by our stockholders in connection with our liquidation may be reduced.
If we are deemed to be an investment company under the Investment Company Act, we may be required to institute burdensome compliance requirements and our activities may be restricted, which may make it difficult for us to complete our business combination.
| ● | If we are deemed to be an investment company under the Investment Company Act, our activities may be restricted, including: |
| ● | restrictions on the nature of our investments; and |
| ● | restrictions on the issuance of securities, each of which may make it difficult for us to complete our business combination. |
In addition, we may have imposed upon us burdensome requirements, including:
| ● | registration as an investment company; |
| ● | adoption of a specific form of corporate structure; and |
| ● | reporting, record keeping, voting, proxy and disclosure requirements and other rules and regulations. |
In order not to be regulated as an investment company under the Investment Company Act, unless we can qualify for an exclusion, we must ensure that we are engaged primarily in a business other than investing, reinvesting or trading in securities and that our activities do not include investing, reinvesting, owning, holding or trading “investment securities” constituting more than 40% of our total assets (exclusive of U.S. government securities and cash items) on an unconsolidated basis. Our business is to identify and complete a business combination and thereafter to operate the post-transaction business or assets for the long term. We do not plan to buy businesses or assets with a view to resale or profit from their resale. We do not plan to buy unrelated businesses or assets or to be a passive investor.
We do not believe that our anticipated principal activities will subject us to the Investment Company Act. To this end, the proceeds held in the trust account may only be invested in United States “government securities” within the meaning of Section 2(a)(16) of the Investment Company Act having a maturity of 185 days or less or in money market funds meeting certain conditions under Rule 2a-7 promulgated under the Investment Company Act which invest only in direct U.S. government treasury obligations. Pursuant to the trust agreement, the trustee is not permitted to invest in other securities or assets. By restricting the investment of the proceeds to these instruments, and by having a business plan targeted at acquiring and growing businesses for the long term (rather than on buying and
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selling businesses in the manner of a merchant bank or private equity fund), we intend to avoid being deemed an “investment company” within the meaning of the Investment Company Act. Our initial public offering was not intended for persons who are seeking a return on investments in government securities or investment securities. The trust account is intended as a holding place for funds pending the earliest to occur of: (a) the completion of our initial business combination, (b) the redemption of any public shares properly tendered in connection with a stockholder vote to amend our amended and restated certificate of incorporation (i) to modify the substance or timing of our obligation to provide holders of our Class A common stock the right to have their shares redeemed in connection with our initial business combination or to redeem 100% of our public shares if we do not complete our initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering or (ii) with respect to any other provisions relating to the rights of holders of our Class A common stock, and (c) the redemption of our public shares if we have not consummated our business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering, subject to applicable law. If we do not invest the proceeds as discussed above, we may be deemed to be subject to the Investment Company Act. If we were deemed to be subject to the Investment Company Act, compliance with these additional regulatory burdens would require additional expenses for which we have not allotted funds and may hinder our ability to complete a business combination. If we are unable to complete our initial business combination, our public stockholders may receive only approximately $10.00 per share on the liquidation of our trust account and our warrants will expire worthless.
We may have a limited ability to assess the management of a prospective target business and, as a result, may affect our initial business combination with a target business whose management may not have the skills, qualifications or abilities to manage a public company, which could, in turn, negatively impact the value of our stockholders’ investment in us.
When evaluating the desirability of effecting our initial business combination with a prospective target business, our ability to assess the target business’ management may be limited due to a lack of time, resources or information. Our assessment of the capabilities of the target’s management, therefore, may prove to be incorrect and such management may lack the skills, qualifications or abilities we suspected. Should the target’s management not possess the skills, qualifications or abilities necessary to manage a public company, the operations and profitability of the post-combination business may be negatively impacted. Accordingly, any stockholders who choose to remain stockholders following the business combination could suffer a reduction in the value of their shares. Such stockholders are unlikely to have a remedy for such reduction in value.
We may issue notes or other debt securities, or otherwise incur substantial debt, to complete a business combination, which may adversely affect our leverage and financial condition and thus negatively impact the value of our stockholders’ investment in us.
We may choose to incur substantial debt to complete our business combination. We have agreed that we will not incur any indebtedness unless we have obtained from the lender a waiver of any right, title, interest or claim of any kind in or to the monies held in the trust account. As such, no issuance of debt will affect the per-share amount available for redemption from the trust account. Nevertheless, the incurrence of debt could have a variety of negative effects, including:
| ● | default and foreclosure on our assets if our operating revenues after an initial business combination are insufficient to repay our debt obligations; |
| ● | acceleration of our obligations to repay the indebtedness even if we make all principal and interest payments when due if we breach certain covenants that require the maintenance of certain financial ratios or reserves without a waiver or renegotiation of that covenant; |
| ● | our immediate payment of all principal and accrued interest, if any, if the debt security is payable on demand; |
| ● | our inability to obtain necessary additional financing if the debt security contains covenants restricting our ability to obtain such financing while the debt security is outstanding; |
| ● | our inability to pay dividends on our common stock; |
| ● | using a substantial portion of our cash flow to pay principal and interest on our debt, which will reduce the funds available for dividends on our common stock if declared, our ability to pay expenses, make capital expenditures and acquisitions, and fund other general corporate purposes; |
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| ● | limitations on our flexibility in planning for and reacting to changes in our business and in the industry in which we operate; |
| ● | increased vulnerability to adverse changes in general economic, industry and competitive conditions and adverse changes in government regulation; |
| ● | limitations on our ability to borrow additional amounts for expenses, capital expenditures, acquisitions, debt service requirements, and execution of our strategy; and |
| ● | other disadvantages compared to our competitors who have less debt. |
We may only be able to complete one business combination with the proceeds of our initial public offering and the sale of the private placement warrants, which will cause us to be solely dependent on a single business which may have a limited number of products or services. This lack of diversification may negatively impact our operations and profitability.
As of December 31, 2021, we had marketable securities and cash held in the Trust Account of $334,441,194, before payment of $11,697,550 in deferred underwriting fees. We intend to use substantially all of the funds held in the Trust Account, including any amounts representing interest earned on the Trust Account to complete our business combination.We may effectuate our business combination with a single target business or multiple target businesses simultaneously or within a short period of time. However, we may not be able to effectuate our business combination with more than one target business because of various factors, including the existence of complex accounting issues and the requirement that we prepare and file pro forma financial statements with the SEC that present operating results and the financial condition of several target businesses as if they had been operated on a combined basis. By completing our initial business combination with only a single business, our lack of diversification may subject us to numerous economic, competitive and regulatory developments. Further, we would not be able to diversify our operations or benefit from the possible spreading of risks or offsetting of losses, unlike other entities which may have the resources to complete several business combinations in different industries or different areas of a single industry. Accordingly, the prospects for our success may be:
| ● | solely dependent upon the performance of a single business, property or asset; or |
| ● | dependent upon the development or market acceptance of a single or limited number of products, processes or services. |
This lack of diversification may subject us to numerous economic, competitive and regulatory developments, any or all of which may have a substantial adverse impact upon the particular industry in which we may operate subsequent to our business combination.
We may attempt to simultaneously complete business combinations with multiple prospective targets, which may hinder our ability to complete our business combination and give rise to increased costs and risks that could negatively impact our operations and profitability.
If we determine to simultaneously acquire several businesses that are owned by different sellers, we will need for each of such sellers to agree that our purchase of its business is contingent on the simultaneous closings of the other business combinations, which may make it more difficult for us, and delay our ability, to complete our initial business combination. With multiple business combinations, we could also face additional risks, including additional burdens and costs with respect to possible multiple negotiations and due diligence investigations (if there are multiple sellers) and the additional risks associated with the subsequent assimilation of the operations and services or products of the acquired companies in a single operating business. If we are unable to adequately address these risks, it could negatively impact our profitability and results of operations.
Because we must furnish our stockholders with target business financial statements, we may lose the ability to complete an otherwise advantageous initial business combination with some prospective target businesses.
The federal proxy rules require that the proxy statement with respect to the vote on an initial business combination include historical and pro forma financial statement disclosure. We will include the same financial statement disclosure in connection with our tender offer documents, whether or not they are required under the tender offer rules. These financial statements may be required to be prepared in accordance with, or be reconciled to, accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America, or GAAP, or international financial reporting standards, or IFRS, depending on the circumstances and the historical financial statements may be
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required to be audited in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States), or PCAOB. These financial statement requirements may limit the pool of potential target businesses we may acquire because some targets may be unable to provide such financial statements in time for us to disclose such statements in accordance with federal proxy rules and complete our initial business combination within the prescribed time frame.
The provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation that relate to our pre-business combination activity (and corresponding provisions of the agreement governing the release of funds from our trust account) may be amended with the approval of holders of 65% of our common stock, which is a lower amendment threshold than that of some other blank check companies. It may be easier for us, therefore, to amend our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and the trust agreement to facilitate the completion of an initial business combination that some of our stockholders may not support.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that any of its provisions related to pre-business combination activity (including the requirement to deposit proceeds of our initial public offering and the private placement of warrants into the trust account and not release such amounts except in specified circumstances, and to provide redemption rights to public stockholders as described herein) may be amended if approved by holders of 65% of our common stock entitled to vote thereon, and corresponding provisions of the trust agreement governing the release of funds from our trust account may be amended if approved by holders of 65% of our common stock entitled to vote thereon. In all other instances, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation may be amended by holders of a majority of our outstanding common stock entitled to vote thereon, subject to applicable provisions of the DGCL or applicable stock exchange rules. Our initial stockholders, who collectively beneficially own 20% of our common stock, will participate in any vote to amend our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and/or trust agreement and will have the discretion to vote in any manner they choose. As a result, we may be able to amend the provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation which govern our pre-business combination behavior more easily than some other blank check companies, and this may increase our ability to complete a business combination with which you do not agree. Our stockholders may pursue remedies against us for any breach of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation.
Our sponsor, executive officers and directors have agreed, pursuant to a written agreement with us, that they will not propose any amendment to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation that would modify the substance or timing of our obligation to provide holders of our Class A common stock the right to have their shares redeemed in connection with our initial business combination or to redeem 100% of our public shares if we do not complete our initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering or with respect to any other provision relating to the rights of holders of our Class A common stock unless we provide our public stockholders with the opportunity to redeem their shares of Class A common stock upon approval of any such amendment at a per-share price, payable in cash, equal to the aggregate amount then on deposit in the trust account, including interest (which interest shall be net of taxes payable) divided by the number of the then outstanding public shares. These agreements are contained in a letter agreement that we have entered into with our sponsor, officers and directors. Our stockholders are not parties to, or third-party beneficiaries of, these agreements and, as a result, will not have the ability to pursue remedies against our sponsor, officers or directors for any breach of these agreements. As a result, in the event of a breach, our stockholders would need to pursue a stockholder derivative action, subject to applicable law.
We may be unable to obtain additional financing to complete our initial business combination or to fund the operations and growth of a target business, which could compel us to restructure or abandon a particular business combination.
If the net proceeds of our initial public offering and the sale of the private placement warrants prove to be insufficient to allow us to complete our initial business combination, either because of the size of our initial business combination, the depletion of the available net proceeds in search of a target business, the obligation to repurchase for cash a significant number of shares from stockholders who elect redemption in connection with our initial business combination or the terms of negotiated transactions to purchase shares in connection with our initial business combination, we may be required to seek additional financing or to abandon the proposed business combination. We cannot assure you that such financing will be available on acceptable terms, if at all. To the extent that additional financing proves to be unavailable when needed to complete our initial business combination, we would be compelled to either restructure the transaction or abandon that particular business combination and seek an alternative target business candidate. If we are unable to complete our initial business combination, our public stockholders may receive only approximately $10.00 per share plus any pro rata interest earned on the funds held in the trust account and not previously released to us to pay our franchise and income taxes on the liquidation of our trust account and our warrants will expire worthless. In addition, even if we do not need additional financing to complete our business combination, we may require such financing to fund the operations or growth of the target business. The failure to secure additional financing could have a material adverse effect on the continued development or growth of the target business. None
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of our officers, directors or stockholders is required to provide any financing to us in connection with or after our initial business combination. If we are unable to complete our initial business combination, our public stockholders may only receive approximately $10.00 per share on the liquidation of our trust account, and our warrants will expire worthless.
Although we have identified general criteria and guidelines that we believe are important in evaluating prospective target businesses, we may enter into our initial business combination with a target that does not meet such criteria and guidelines, and as a result, the target business with which we enter into our initial business combination may not have attributes entirely consistent with our general criteria and guidelines.
Although we have identified general criteria and guidelines for evaluating prospective target businesses, it is possible that a target business with which we enter into our initial business combination will not have all of these positive attributes. If we complete our initial business combination with a target that does not meet some or all of these guidelines, such combination may not be as successful as a combination with a business that does meet all of our general criteria and guidelines. In addition, if we announce a prospective business combination with a target that does not meet our general criteria and guidelines, a greater number of stockholders may exercise their redemption rights, which may make it difficult for us to meet any closing condition with a target business that requires us to have a minimum net worth or a certain amount of cash. In addition, if stockholder approval of the transaction is required by law, or we decide to obtain stockholder approval for business or other legal reasons, it may be more difficult for us to attain stockholder approval of our initial business combination if the target business does not meet our general criteria and guidelines. If we are unable to complete our initial business combination, our public stockholders may receive only approximately $10.00 per share on the liquidation of our trust account and our warrants will expire worthless.
We may seek acquisition opportunities with a financially unstable business or an entity lacking an established record of revenue or earnings, which could subject us to volatile revenues or earnings or difficulty in retaining key personnel.
To the extent we complete our initial business combination with a financially unstable business or an entity lacking an established record of revenues or earnings, we may be affected by numerous risks inherent in the operations of the business with which we combine. These risks include volatile revenues or earnings and difficulties in obtaining and retaining key personnel. Although our officers and directors will endeavor to evaluate the risks inherent in a particular target business, we may not be able to properly ascertain or assess all of the significant risk factors and we may not have adequate time to complete due diligence. Furthermore, some of these risks may be outside of our control and leave us with no ability to control or reduce the chances that those risks will adversely impact a target business.
We are not required to obtain an opinion from an independent investment banking firm or from an independent accounting firm, and consequently, you may have no assurance from an independent source that the price we are paying for the business is fair to our company from a financial point of view.
Unless we complete our business combination with an affiliated entity or our board cannot independently determine the fair market value of the target business or businesses, we are not required to obtain an opinion from an independent investment banking firm or from an independent accounting firm that the price we are paying is fair to our company from a financial point of view. If no opinion is obtained, our stockholders will be relying on the judgment of our board of directors, who will determine fair market value based on standards generally accepted by the financial community. Such standards used will be disclosed in our tender offer documents or proxy solicitation materials, as applicable, related to our initial business combination.
We may issue additional common stock or preferred stock to complete our initial business combination or under an employee incentive plan after completion of our initial business combination. We may also issue shares of Class A common stock upon the conversion of the Class B common stock at a ratio greater than one-to-one at the time of our initial business combination as a result of the anti-dilution provisions contained in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation. Any such issuances would dilute the interest of our stockholders and likely present other risks.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation authorizes the issuance of up to 500,000,000 shares of Class A common stock, par value $0.0001 per share, 50,000,000 shares of Class B common stock, par value $0.0001 per share, and 1,000,000 shares of preferred stock, par value $0.0001 per share. There are 466,578,430 and 41,644,607 authorized but unissued shares of Class A common stock and Class B common stock, respectively, available for issuance, excluding shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance upon exercise of outstanding warrants and currently issuable upon conversion of Class B common stock. There are no shares of preferred stock issued and outstanding. Shares of Class B common stock are convertible into shares of our Class A common stock initially at a
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one-for-one ratio but subject to adjustment as set forth in the prospectus for our initial public offering, including in certain circumstances in which we issue Class A common stock or equity-linked securities related to our initial business combination. Shares of Class B common stock are also convertible at the option of the holder at any time.
We may issue a substantial number of additional shares of common or preferred stock to complete our initial business combination or under an employee incentive plan after completion of our initial business combination.
We may also issue shares of Class A common stock to redeem the warrants or upon conversion of the Class B common stock at a ratio greater than one-to-one at the time of our initial business combination as a result of the anti-dilution provisions contained in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation. However, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides, among other things, that prior to our initial business combination, we may not issue additional shares of capital stock that would entitle the holders thereof to (i) receive funds from the trust account or (ii) vote as a class with our public shares (a) on our initial business combination or on any other proposal presented to stockholders prior to or in connection with the completion of an initial business combination or (b) to approve an amendment to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to (x) extend the time we have to consummate a business combination beyond 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering or (y) amend the foregoing provisions. These provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, like all provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, may be amended with a stockholder vote. The issuance of additional shares of common or preferred stock:
| ● | may significantly dilute the equity interest of investors in our initial public offering; |
| ● | may subordinate the rights of holders of common stock if preferred stock is issued with rights senior to those afforded our common stock; |
| ● | could cause a change of control if a substantial number of shares of our common stock are issued, which may affect, among other things, our ability to use our net operating loss carry forwards, if any, and could result in the resignation or removal of our present officers and directors; and |
| ● | may adversely affect prevailing market prices for our units, Class A common stock and/or warrants. |
Resources could be wasted in researching acquisitions that are not completed, which could materially adversely affect subsequent attempts to locate and acquire or merge with another business. If we are unable to complete our initial business combination, our public stockholders may receive only approximately $10.00 per share, or less than such amount in certain circumstances, on the liquidation of our trust account and our warrants will expire worthless.
We anticipate that the investigation of each specific target business and the negotiation, drafting and execution of relevant agreements, disclosure documents and other instruments will require substantial management time and attention and substantial costs for accountants, attorneys and others. If we decide not to complete a specific initial business combination, the costs incurred up to that point for the proposed transaction likely would not be recoverable. Furthermore,, we may fail to complete our initial business combination for any number of reasons including those beyond our control. Any such event will result in a loss to us of the related costs incurred which could materially adversely affect subsequent attempts to locate and acquire or merge with another business. If we are unable to complete our initial business combination, our public stockholders may receive only approximately $10.00 per share on the liquidation of our trust account and our warrants will expire worthless.
Our warrants and founder shares may have an adverse effect on the market price of our Class A common stock and make it more difficult to effectuate our business combination.
We issued warrants to purchase 16,710,785 shares of our Class A common stock in our initial public offering and, simultaneously with the closing of our initial public offering, we also issued in a private placement warrants to purchase 9,700,000 shares of Class A common stock at $11.50 per share. Prior to our initial public offering, our sponsor purchased 8,625,000 founder shares in a private placement (269,607 of which were subsequently forfeited due to the expiration of the underwriter’s over-allotment option). The founder shares are convertible into shares of Class A common stock on a one-for-one basis, subject to adjustment as set forth herein. In addition, if our sponsor makes any working capital loans, up to $1,500,000 of such loans may be converted into warrants, at the price of $1.00 per warrant at the option of the lender. Such warrants would be identical to the private placement warrants, including as to exercise price, exercisability and exercise period. Our public warrants are also redeemable by us for Class A common stock as described in “Description
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of Securities — Warrants — Public Stockholders’ Warrants — Redemption of Warrants for Class A Common Stock” Contained in the final prospectus related to our initial public offering.
To the extent we issue shares of Class A common stock to effectuate a business combination, the potential for the issuance of a substantial number of additional shares of Class A common stock upon exercise of these warrants and conversion rights could make us a less attractive acquisition vehicle to a target business. Any such issuance will increase the number of issued and outstanding shares of our Class A common stock and reduce the value of the shares of Class A common stock issued to complete the business combination. Therefore, our warrants and founder shares may make it more difficult to effectuate a business combination or increase the cost of acquiring the target business.
The private placement warrants are identical to the warrants sold as part of the units in our initial public offering except that, so long as they are held by our sponsor or its permitted transferees, (i) they will not be redeemable by us, except as otherwise set forth herein, (ii) they (including the Class A common stock issuable upon exercise of these warrants) may not, subject to certain limited exceptions, be transferred, assigned or sold by our sponsor until 30 days after the completion of our initial business combination and (iii) they may be exercised by the holders on a cashless basis.
A provision of our warrant agreement may make it more difficult for us to consummate an initial business combination.
Unlike most blank check companies, if (i) we issue additional shares of Class A common stock or equity-linked securities for capital raising purposes in connection with the closing of our initial business combination at an issue price or effective issue price of less than $9.20 per share of Class A common stock (with such issue price or effective issue price to be determined in good faith by our board of directors and, in the case of any such issuance to our sponsor or its affiliates, without taking into account any founder shares held by our sponsor or such affiliates, as applicable, prior to such issuance) (the “Newly Issued Price”) (ii) the aggregate gross proceeds from such issuances represent more than 60% of the total equity proceeds, and interest thereon, available for the funding of our initial business combination on the date of the consummation of our initial business combination (net of redemptions), and (iii) the volume weighted average trading price of our shares of Class A common stock during the 20 trading day period starting on the trading day prior to the day on which we consummate our initial business combination (such price, the “Market Value”) is below $9.20 per share, then the exercise price of the warrants will be adjusted to be equal to 115% of the higher of the Market Value and the Newly Issued Price, and the $18.00 per share redemption trigger prices will be adjusted (to the nearest cent) to be equal to the higher of the Market Value and the Newly Issued Price. This may make it more difficult for us to consummate an initial business combination with a target business.
Compliance obligations under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act may make it more difficult for us to effectuate our initial business combination, require substantial financial and management resources, and increase the time and costs of completing an acquisition.
Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires that we evaluate and report on our system of internal controls over financial reporting beginning with this Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021. Only in the event we are deemed to be a large accelerated filer or an accelerated filer and no longer qualify as an emerging growth company, will we be required to comply with the independent registered public accounting firm attestation requirement on our internal control over financial reporting. The fact that we are a blank check company makes compliance with the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act particularly burdensome on us as compared to other public companies because a target company with which we seek to complete our business combination may not be in compliance with the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act regarding adequacy of its internal controls. The development of the internal control over financial reporting of any such entity to achieve compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act may increase the time and costs necessary to complete any such acquisition.
If the net proceeds of our initial public offering and the sale of the private placement warrants not being held in the trust account are insufficient, it could limit the amount available to fund our search for a target business or businesses and complete our initial business combination and we will depend on loans from our sponsor or management team to fund our search for a business combination, to pay our franchise and income taxes and to complete our initial business combination. If we are unable to obtain these loans, we may be unable to complete our initial business combination.
As of December 31, 2021, we had $479, 694 available to us outside the trust account to fund our working capital requirements. If we are required to seek additional capital, we would need to borrow funds from our sponsor, management team or other third parties to operate or may be forced to liquidate. Neither our sponsor, members of our management team nor any of their affiliates is under any
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obligation to advance funds to us in such circumstances. Any such advances would be repaid only from funds held outside the trust account or from funds released to us upon completion of our initial business combination. We do not expect to seek loans from parties other than our sponsor or an affiliate of our sponsor as we do not believe third parties will be willing to loan such funds and provide a waiver against any and all rights to seek access to funds in our trust account. If we are unable to obtain these loans, we may be unable to complete our initial business combination. If we are unable to complete our initial business combination because we do not have sufficient funds available to us, we will be forced to cease operations and liquidate the trust account. Consequently, our public stockholders may only receive approximately $10.00 per share on our redemption of our public shares, and our warrants will expire worthless. In certain circumstances, our public stockholders may receive less than $10.00 per share on the redemption of their shares.
Holders of Class A common stock will not be entitled to vote on any election of directors we hold prior to our initial business combination.
Prior to our initial business combination, only holders of our founder shares will have the right to vote on the election of directors. Holders of our public shares will not be entitled to vote on the election of directors during such time. In addition, prior to the completion of an initial business combination, holders of a majority of our founder shares may remove a member of the board of directors for any reason. Accordingly, you may not have any say in the management of our company prior to the consummation of an initial business combination.
We have not registered the shares of Class A common stock issuable upon exercise of the warrants under the Securities Act or any state securities laws, and such registration may not be in place when an investor desires to exercise warrants, thus precluding such investor from being able to exercise its warrants except on a cashless basis and potentially causing such warrants to expire worthless.
However, under the terms of the warrant agreement, we have agreed that, as soon as practicable, but in no event later than twenty business days after the closing of our initial business combination, we will use our commercially reasonable efforts to file with the SEC a registration statement covering the issuance of such shares, and we will use our commercially reasonable efforts to cause the same to become effective within 60 business days after the closing of our initial business combination and to maintain the effectiveness of such registration statement and a current prospectus relating to those shares until the warrants expire or are redeemed. We cannot assure you that we will be able to do so if, for example, any facts or events arise which represent a fundamental change in the information set forth in the registration statement or prospectus, the financial statements contained or incorporated by reference therein are not current, complete or correct or the SEC issues a stop order. If the shares issuable upon exercise of the warrants are not registered under the Securities Act in accordance with the above requirements, we will be required to permit holders to exercise their warrants on a cashless basis, in which case, the number of shares of Class A common stock that you will receive upon cashless exercise will be based on a formula subject to a maximum amount of shares equal to 0.361 shares per warrant (subject to adjustment). However, no warrant will be exercisable for cash or on a cashless basis, and we will not be obligated to issue any shares to holders seeking to exercise their warrants, unless the issuance of the shares upon such exercise is registered or qualified under the securities laws of the state of the exercising holder, or an exemption from registration is available. Notwithstanding the above, if our Class A common stock is at the time of any exercise of a warrant not listed on a national securities exchange such that it satisfies the definition of a “covered security” under Section 18(b)(1) of the Securities Act, we may, at our option, require holders of public warrants who exercise their warrants to do so on a “cashless basis” in accordance with Section 3(a)(9) of the Securities Act and, in the event we so elect, we will not be required to file or maintain in effect a registration statement, but we will be required to use our commercially reasonable efforts to register or qualify the shares under applicable blue sky laws to the extent an exemption is not available. In no event will we be required to net cash settle any warrant, or issue securities or other compensation in exchange for the warrants in the event that we are unable to register or qualify the shares underlying the warrants under applicable state securities laws and there is no exemption available. If the issuance of the shares upon exercise of the warrants is not so registered or qualified or exempt from registration or qualification, the holder of such warrant shall not be entitled to exercise such warrant and such warrant may have no value and expire worthless. In such event, holders who acquired their warrants as part of a purchase of units will have paid the full unit purchase price solely for the shares of Class A common stock included in the units. There may be a circumstance where an exemption from registration exists for holders of our private placement warrants to exercise their warrants while a corresponding exemption does not exist for holders of the public warrants included as part of units sold in our initial public offering. In such an instance, our sponsor and its permitted transferees (which may include our directors and officers) would be able to exercise their warrants and sell the shares of common stock underlying their warrants while holders of our public warrants would not be able to exercise their warrants and sell the underlying shares of common stock. If and when the warrants become redeemable by us, we may exercise our redemption right even if we are unable to register or qualify the underlying shares of Class A common stock for sale under all applicable state securities laws. As a result, we may redeem the warrants as set forth above even if the holders are otherwise unable to exercise their warrants.
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We may attempt to complete our initial business combination with a private company about which little information is available, which may result in a business combination with a company that is not as profitable as we suspected, if at all.
In pursuing our acquisition strategy, we may seek to effectuate our initial business combination with a privately held company. By definition, very little public information exists about private companies, and we could be required to make our decision on whether to pursue a potential initial business combination on the basis of limited information, which may result in a business combination with a company that is not as profitable as we suspected, if at all.
Risks Relating to Our Securities
If we seek stockholder approval of our initial business combination and we do not conduct redemptions pursuant to the tender offer rules, and if you or a “group” of stockholders are deemed to hold in excess of 15% of our Class A common stock, you will lose the ability to redeem all such shares in excess of 15% of our Class A common stock.
If we seek stockholder approval of our initial business combination and we do not conduct redemptions in connection with our initial business combination pursuant to the tender offer rules, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that a public stockholder, together with any affiliate of such stockholder or any other person with whom such stockholder is acting in concert or as a “group” (as defined under Section 13 of the Exchange Act), will be restricted from seeking redemption rights with respect to more than an aggregate of 15% of the shares sold in our initial public offering, which we refer to as the “Excess Shares,” without our prior consent. However, we would not be restricting our stockholders’ ability to vote all of their shares (including Excess Shares) for or against our business combination. Your inability to redeem the Excess Shares will reduce your influence over our ability to complete our business combination and you could suffer a material loss on your investment in us if you sell Excess Shares in open market transactions. Additionally, you will not receive redemption distributions with respect to the Excess Shares if we complete our business combination. And as a result, you will continue to hold that number of shares exceeding 15% and, in order to dispose of such shares, would be required to sell your stock in open market transactions, potentially at a loss.
The NYSE may delist our securities from trading on its exchange, which could limit investors’ ability to make transactions in our securities and subject us to additional trading restrictions.
Our Class A common stock shares are listed on the NYSE. Although we expect to continue to meet the minimum listing standards set forth in the NYSE listing standards, our securities may not continue to be listed on the NYSE in the future or prior to our initial business combination. In order to continue listing our securities on the NYSE prior to our initial business combination, we must maintain certain financial, distribution and stock price levels. Additionally, in connection with our initial business combination, we will be required to demonstrate compliance with the NYSE’s initial listing requirements, which are more rigorous than the NYSE’s continued listing requirements, in order to continue to maintain the listing of our securities on the NYSE. For instance, our stock price would generally be required to be at least $4.00 per share and we must have 400 round lot holders upon the consummation of our initial business combination. We may not be able to meet those initial listing requirements at that time.
If the NYSE delists our securities from trading on its exchange and we are not able to list our securities on another national securities exchange, we expect our securities could be quoted on an over-the-counter market. If this were to occur, we could face significant material adverse consequences, including:
| ● | a limited availability of market quotations for our securities; |
| ● | reduced liquidity for our securities; |
| ● | a determination that our Class A common stock is a “penny stock” which will require brokers trading in our Class A common stock to adhere to more stringent rules and possibly result in a reduced level of trading activity in the secondary trading market for our securities; |
| ● | a limited amount of news and analyst coverage; and |
| ● | a decreased ability to issue additional securities or obtain additional financing in the future. |
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The National Securities Markets Improvement Act of 1996, which is a federal statute, prevents or preempts the states from regulating the sale of certain securities, which are referred to as “covered securities.” Because our Class A common stock and warrants are listed on the NYSE, our units, Class A common stock and warrants will be covered securities. Although the states are preempted from regulating the sale of covered securities, the federal statute does allow the states to investigate companies if there is a suspicion of fraud, and, if there is a finding of fraudulent activity, then the states can regulate or bar the sale of covered securities in a particular case. While we are not aware of a state having used these powers to prohibit or restrict the sale of securities issued by blank check companies, other than the State of Idaho, certain state securities regulators view blank check companies unfavorably and might use these powers, or threaten to use these powers, to hinder the sale of securities of blank check companies in their states. Further, if we were no longer listed on the NYSE, our securities would not be covered securities and we would be subject to regulation in each state in which we offer our securities.
Provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and Delaware law may inhibit a takeover of us, which could limit the price investors might be willing to pay in the future for our Class A common stock and could entrench management.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation contains provisions that may discourage unsolicited takeover proposals that stockholders may consider to be in their best interests. These provisions include a staggered board of directors and the ability of the board of directors to designate the terms of and issue new series of preferred shares, which may make the removal of management more difficult and may discourage transactions that otherwise could involve payment of a premium over prevailing market prices for our securities.
We are also subject to anti-takeover provisions under Delaware law, which could delay or prevent a change of control. Together these provisions may make the removal of management more difficult and may discourage transactions that otherwise could involve payment of a premium over prevailing market prices for our securities.
The grant of registration rights to our initial stockholders may make it more difficult to complete our initial business combination, and the future exercise of such rights may adversely affect the market price of our Class A common stock.
Pursuant to an agreement entered into concurrently with the issuance and sale of the securities in our initial public offering, our initial stockholders and their permitted transferees can demand that we register the private placement warrants and the shares of Class A common stock issuable upon exercise of the founder shares and the private placement warrants held by them and holders of warrants that may be issued upon conversion of working capital loans may demand that we register such warrants or the Class A common stock issuable upon exercise of such warrants. We will bear the cost of registering these securities. The registration and availability of such a significant number of securities for trading in the public market may have an adverse effect on the market price of our Class A common stock. In addition, the existence of the registration rights may make our initial business combination more costly or difficult to conclude. This is because the stockholders of the target business may increase the equity stake they seek in the combined entity or ask for more cash consideration to offset the negative impact on the market price of our Class A common stock that is expected when the securities owned by our initial stockholders or holders of working capital loans or their respective permitted transferees are registered.
Risks Relating to our Sponsor and Management Team
Our ability to successfully effect our initial business combination and to be successful thereafter will be totally dependent upon the efforts of our key personnel, some of whom may join us following our initial business combination. The loss of key personnel could negatively impact the operations and profitability of our post-combination business.
Our ability to successfully effect our business combination is dependent upon the efforts of our key personnel. The role of our key personnel in the target business, however, cannot presently be ascertained. Although some of our key personnel may remain with the target business in senior management or advisory positions following our business combination, it is likely that some or all of the management of the target business will remain in place. While we intend to closely scrutinize any individuals we engage after our initial business combination, we cannot assure you that our assessment of these individuals will prove to be correct. These individuals may be unfamiliar with the requirements of operating a company regulated by the SEC, which could cause us to have to expend time and resources helping them become familiar with such requirements.
In addition, the officers and directors of an acquisition candidate may resign upon completion of our initial business combination. The departure of a business combination target’s key personnel could negatively impact the operations and profitability of our post-
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combination business. The role of an acquisition candidate’s key personnel upon the completion of our initial business combination cannot be ascertained at this time. Although we contemplate that certain members of an acquisition candidate’s management team will remain associated with the acquisition candidate following our initial business combination, it is possible that members of the management of an acquisition candidate will not wish to remain in place. The loss of key personnel could negatively impact the operations and profitability of our post-combination business.
Our key personnel may negotiate employment or consulting agreements with a target business in connection with a particular business combination. These agreements may provide for them to receive compensation following our business combination and as a result, may cause them to have conflicts of interest in determining whether a particular business combination is the most advantageous.
Our key personnel may be able to remain with the company after the completion of our business combination only if they are able to negotiate employment or consulting agreements in connection with the business combination. Such negotiations would take place simultaneously with the negotiation of the business combination and could provide for such individuals to receive compensation in the form of cash payments and/or our securities for services they would render to us after the completion of the business combination. The personal and financial interests of such individuals may influence their motivation in identifying and selecting a target business. However, we believe the ability of such individuals to remain with us after the completion of our business combination will not be the determining factor in our decision as to whether or not we will proceed with any potential business combination. There is no certainty, however, that any of our key personnel will remain with us after the completion of our business combination. We cannot assure you that any of our key personnel will remain in senior management or advisory positions with us. The determination as to whether any of our key personnel will remain with us will be made at the time of our initial business combination. In addition, pursuant to an agreement entered into concurrently with the issuance and sale of the securities in our initial public offering, our sponsor, upon consummation of an initial business combination, will be entitled to nominate three individuals for election to our board of directors.
Our officers, directors and Advisors will allocate their time to other businesses thereby causing conflicts of interest in their determination as to how much time to devote to our affairs. This conflict of interest could have a negative impact on our ability to complete our initial business combination.
Our officers, directors and Advisors are not required to, and will not, commit their full time to our affairs, which may result in a conflict of interest in allocating their time between our operations and our search for a business combination and their other businesses. We do not intend to have any full-time employees prior to the completion of our initial business combination. Each of our officers and Advisors is engaged in other business endeavors for which he may be entitled to substantial compensation and our officers and Advisors are not obligated to contribute any specific number of hours per week to our affairs. Our directors and Advisors also serve as officers or board members for other entities. If our officers’, directors’ and Advisors’ other business affairs require them to devote substantial amounts of time to such affairs in excess of their current commitment levels, it could limit their ability to devote time to our affairs which may have a negative impact on our ability to complete our initial business combination.
Certain of our officers and directors are now, and all of them may in the future become, affiliated with entities engaged in business activities similar to those intended to be conducted by us and, accordingly, may have conflicts of interest in allocating their time and determining to which entity a particular business opportunity should be presented.
Following the completion of our initial public offering and until we consummate our initial business combination, we intend to engage in the business of identifying and combining with one or more businesses. Our sponsor and officers and directors are, and may in the future become, affiliated with entities that are engaged in a similar business.
Our officers and directors also may become aware of business opportunities which may be appropriate for presentation to us and the other entities to which they owe certain fiduciary or contractual duties. Accordingly, they may have conflicts of interest in determining to which entity a particular business opportunity should be presented. These conflicts may not be resolved in our favor and a potential target business may be presented to another entity prior to its presentation to us. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that we renounce our interest in any corporate opportunity offered to any director or officer unless such opportunity is expressly offered to such person solely in his or her capacity as a director or officer of our company and such opportunity is one we are legally and contractually permitted to undertake and would otherwise be reasonable for us to pursue.
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Our officers, directors, security holders and their respective affiliates may have competitive pecuniary interests that conflict with our interests.
We have not adopted a policy that expressly prohibits our directors, officers, security holders or affiliates from having a direct or indirect pecuniary or financial interest in any investment to be acquired or disposed of by us or in any transaction to which we are a party or have an interest. In fact, we may enter into a business combination with a target business that is affiliated with our sponsor, our directors or officers, although we do not intend to do so. We do not have a policy that expressly prohibits any such persons from engaging for their own account in business activities of the types conducted by us. Accordingly, such persons or entities may have a conflict between their interests and ours.
Members of our management team and board of directors have significant experience as founders, board members, officers or executives of other companies. As a result, certain of those persons have been, may be, or may become, involved in proceedings, investigations and litigation relating to the business affairs of the companies with which they were, are, or may in the future be, affiliated. This may have an adverse effect on us, which may impede our ability to consummate an initial business combination.
During the course of their careers, members of our management team and board of directors have had significant experience as founders, board members, officers or executives of other companies. As a result of their involvement and positions in these companies, certain persons were, are now, or may in the future become, involved in litigation, investigations or other proceedings relating to the business affairs of such companies or transactions entered into by such companies. Any such litigation, investigations or other proceedings may divert our management team’s and board’s attention and resources away from identifying and selecting a target business or businesses for our initial business combination and may negatively affect our reputation, which may impede our ability to complete an initial business combination.
We may engage in a business combination with one or more target businesses that have relationships with entities that may be affiliated with our sponsor, officers, directors or existing holders which may raise potential conflicts of interest.
In light of the involvement of our sponsor, officers and directors with other entities, we may decide to acquire one or more businesses affiliated with our sponsor, officers or directors. Our directors also serve as officers and board members for other entities. Such entities may compete with us for business combination opportunities. Our sponsor, officers and directors are not currently aware of any specific opportunities for us to complete our business combination with any entities with which they are affiliated, and there have been no preliminary discussions concerning a business combination with any such entity or entities. Although we will not be specifically focusing on, or targeting, any transaction with any affiliated entities, we would pursue such a transaction if we determined that such affiliated entity met our criteria for a business combination as set forth herein and such transaction was approved by a majority of our disinterested directors. Despite our agreement to obtain an opinion from an independent investment banking firm or from an independent accounting firm, regarding the fairness to our company from a financial point of view of a business combination with one or more domestic or international businesses affiliated with our officers, directors or existing holders, potential conflicts of interest still may exist and, as a result, the terms of the business combination may not be as advantageous to our public stockholders as they would be absent any conflicts of interest.
Since our sponsor, officers and directors will lose their entire investment in us if our business combination is not completed, a conflict of interest may arise in determining whether a particular business combination target is appropriate for our initial business combination.
In June 2020, our sponsor purchased 8,625,000 founder shares for an aggregate purchase price of $25,000, or approximately $0.003 per share (269,607 of which were subsequently forfeited due to the expiration of the underwriter’s over-allotment option). The founder shares will be worthless if we do not complete an initial business combination. In addition, our sponsor purchased 9,700,000 private placement warrants, each exercisable for one share of our Class A common stock at $11.50 per share, for a purchase price of $9,700,000, or $1.00 per warrant, that will also be worthless if we do not complete a business combination. Holders of founder shares have agreed (A) to vote any shares owned by them in favor of any proposed business combination and (B) not to redeem any founder shares in connection with a stockholder vote to approve a proposed initial business combination. In addition, we may obtain loans from our sponsor, affiliates of our sponsor or an officer or director. The personal and financial interests of our officers and directors may influence their motivation in identifying and selecting a target business combination, completing an initial business combination and influencing the operation of the business following the initial business combination.
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Our management may not be able to maintain control of a target business after our initial business combination.
We may structure a business combination so that the post-transaction company in which our public stockholders own shares own less than 100% of the equity interests or assets of a target business, but we will only complete such business combination if the post-transaction company owns or acquires 50% or more of the outstanding voting securities of the target or otherwise acquires a controlling interest in the target sufficient for us not to be required to register as an investment company under the Investment Company Act. We will not consider any transaction that does not meet such criteria. Even if the post-transaction company owns 50% or more of the voting securities of the target, our stockholders prior to the business combination may collectively own a minority interest in the post business combination company, depending on valuations ascribed to the target and us in the business combination transaction. For example, we could pursue a transaction in which we issue a substantial number of new shares of Class A common stock in exchange for all of the outstanding capital stock of a target. In this case, we would acquire a 100% interest in the target. However, as a result of the issuance of a substantial number of new shares of common stock, our stockholders immediately prior to such transaction could own less than a majority of our outstanding shares of common stock subsequent to such transaction. In addition, other minority stockholders may subsequently combine their holdings resulting in a single person or group obtaining a larger share of the company’s stock than we initially acquired. Accordingly, this may make it more likely that our management will not be able to maintain our control of the target business. We cannot provide assurance that, upon loss of control of a target business, new management will possess the skills, qualifications or abilities necessary to profitably operate such business.
Certain agreements related to our initial public offering may be amended without stockholder approval.
Each of the agreements related to our initial public offering to which we are a party, other than the warrant agreement and the investment management trust agreement, may be amended without stockholder approval. Such agreements are: the underwriting agreement; the letter agreement among us and our initial stockholders, sponsor, officers and directors; the registration and stockholder rights agreement among us and our initial stockholders; the private placement warrants purchase agreement between us and our sponsor; and the administrative services agreement among us, our sponsor and an affiliate of our sponsor. These agreements contain various provisions that our public stockholders might deem to be material. For example, our letter agreement and the underwriting agreement contain certain lock-up provisions with respect to the founder shares, private placement warrants and other securities held by our initial stockholders, sponsor, officers and directors. Amendments to such agreements would require the consent of the applicable parties thereto and would need to be approved by our board of directors, which may do so for a variety of reasons, including to facilitate our initial business combination. While we do not expect our board of directors to approve any amendment to any of these agreements prior to our initial business combination, it may be possible that our board of directors, in exercising its business judgment and subject to its fiduciary duties, chooses to approve one or more amendments to any such agreement. Any amendment entered into in connection with the consummation of our initial business combination will be disclosed in our proxy solicitation or tender offer materials, as applicable, related to such initial business combination, and any other material amendment to any of our material agreements will be disclosed in a filing with the SEC. Any such amendments would not require approval from our stockholders, may result in the completion of our initial business combination that may not otherwise have been possible, and may have an adverse effect on the value of an investment in our securities. For example, amendments to the lock-up provision discussed above may result in our initial stockholders selling their securities earlier than they would otherwise be permitted, which may have an adverse effect on the price of our securities.
General Risk Factors
We have identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. This material weakness could continue to adversely affect our ability to report our results of operations and financial condition accurately and in a timely manner.
Our management is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with GAAP. Our management is likewise required, on a quarterly basis, to evaluate the effectiveness of our internal controls and to disclose any changes and material weaknesses identified through such evaluation in those internal controls. A material weakness is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting, such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of our annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis.
We identified a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting related to the accounting for the warrants we issued in connection with our initial public offering in September 2020. As a result of this material weakness, our management concluded that our internal control over financial reporting was not effective as of December 31, 2021. This material weakness resulted in a material
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misstatement of our warrant liabilities, change in fair value of warrant liabilities, Class A common stock subject to possible redemption, additional paid-in capital, accumulated deficit and related financial disclosures for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020 and for the quarterly period ended September 30, 2020. For a discussion of management's consideration of the material weakness identified related to the Company's accounting treatment of its public and private placement warrants, see Note 2 to the accompanying financial statements, as well as Part II, Item 9A: Controls and Procedures included in this Report.
We have identified a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting related to the Company’s application of ASC 480-10-S99-3A to its accounting classification of the public shares and related earnings per share calculations. As a result of this material weakness, our management has concluded that our internal control over financial reporting was not effective as of December 31, 2021. Historically, a portion of the public shares was classified as permanent equity to maintain stockholders’ equity greater than $5 million on the basis that the Company will not redeem its public shares in an amount that would cause its net tangible assets to be less than $5,000,001, as described in the Charter. Pursuant to the Company’s re-evaluation of the Company’s application of ASC 480-10-S99-3A to its accounting classification of the public shares, the Company’s management has determined that the public shares include certain provisions that require classification of all of the public shares as temporary equity regardless of the net tangible assets redemption limitation contained in the Charter. For a discussion of management’s consideration of the material weakness identified related to the Company’s application of ASC 480-10-S99-3A to its accounting classification of the public shares, see Part II, Item 9A: Controls and Procedures included in this Report.
To respond to these material weaknesses we have devoted significant effort and resources to the remediation and improvement of our internal control over financial reporting, and we intend to take additional steps to remediate these material weaknesses including plans to enhance processes to better evaluate our research and understanding of the nuances of the complex accounting standards that apply to our consolidated financial statements, enhance access to accounting literature, research materials and documents and increase communication among our personnel and third-party professionals with whom we consult regarding complex accounting applications. The elements of our remediation plan can only be accomplished over time, and we can offer no assurance that these initiatives will ultimately have the intended effects.
Our efforts to remediate these material weaknesses may not be effective or prevent any future material weaknesses or significant deficiency in our internal control over financial reporting. If our efforts are not successful or other material weaknesses or control deficiencies occur in the future, we may be unable to report our financial results accurately on a timely basis, which could cause our reported financial results to be materially misstated and result in the loss of investor confidence and cause the market price of our securities to decline.
Our independent registered public accounting firm’s report contains an explanatory paragraph that expresses substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a “going concern.”
In connection with the Company’s assessment of going concern considerations accordance with FASB’s Accounting Standards Update (“ASU”) 2014-15, we have determined that if the Company is unable to complete a business combination by September 9, 2022, then the Company will cease all operations except for the purpose of liquidating. The date for mandatory liquidation and subsequent dissolution raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern. The financial statements contained elsewhere in this Report do not include any adjustments that might result from our inability to continue as a going concern.
Our warrants are expected to be accounted for as derivative liabilities with changes in fair value each period included in earnings, which may have an adverse effect on the market price of our shares of Class A common stock or may make it more difficult for us to consummate an initial business combination.
We expect to account for our warrants as a “warrant liability”. At each reporting period (1) the accounting treatment of the warrants will be re-evaluated for proper accounting treatment as a liability or equity and (2) the fair value of the liability of the public warrants and private placement warrants will be remeasured and the change in the fair value of the liability will be recorded as other income (expense) in our income statement. The impact of changes in fair value on earnings may have an adverse effect on the market price of our shares of Class A common stock. In addition, potential targets may seek a special purpose acquisition company that does not have warrants that are accounted for as a warrant liability, which may make it more difficult for us to consummate an initial business combination with a target business.
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Changes in laws or regulations, or a failure to comply with any laws and regulations, may adversely affect our business, investments and results of operations.
We are subject to laws and regulations enacted by national, regional and local governments. In particular, we are required to comply with certain SEC and other legal requirements. Compliance with, and monitoring of, applicable laws and regulations may be difficult, time consuming and costly.
Those laws and regulations and their interpretation and application may also change from time to time and those changes could have a material adverse effect on our business, investments and results of operations. In addition, a failure to comply with applicable laws or regulations, as interpreted and applied, could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.
We may amend the terms of the warrants in a manner that may be adverse to holders with the approval by the holders of at least 50% of the then outstanding public warrants. As a result, the exercise price of your warrants could be increased, the exercise period could be shortened and the number of shares of our Class A common stock purchasable upon exercise of a warrant could be decreased, all without your approval.
Our warrants were issued in registered form under a warrant agreement between Continental Stock Transfer Trust Company, as warrant agent, and us. The warrant agreement provides that the terms of the warrants may be amended without the consent of any holder for the purpose of (i) curing any ambiguity or correct any mistake, including to conform the provisions of the warrant agreement to the description of the terms of the warrants and the warrant agreement, or defective provision, (ii) amending the provisions relating to cash dividends on shares of common stock as contemplated by and in accordance with the warrant agreement or (iii) adding or changing any provisions with respect to matters or questions arising under the warrant agreement as the parties to the warrant agreement may deem necessary or desirable and that the parties deem to not adversely affect the rights of the registered holders of the warrants, provided that the approval by the holders of at least 50% of the then-outstanding public warrants is required to make any change that adversely affects the interests of the registered holders of public warrants. Accordingly, we may amend the terms of the public warrants in a manner adverse to a holder if holders of at least 50% of the then outstanding public warrants approve of such amendment and, solely with respect to any amendment to the terms of the private placement warrants or any provision of the warrant agreement with respect to the private placement warrants, 50% of the number of the then outstanding private placement warrants. Although our ability to amend the terms of the public warrants with the consent of at least 50% of the then outstanding public warrants is unlimited, examples of such amendments could be amendments to, among other things, increase the exercise price of the warrants, shorten the exercise period or decrease the number of shares of our Class A common stock purchasable upon exercise of a warrant.
Our warrant agreement will designate the courts of the State of New York or the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York as the sole and exclusive forum for certain types of actions and proceedings that may be initiated by holders of our warrants, which could limit the ability of warrant holders to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with our company.
Our warrant agreement provides that, subject to applicable law, (i) any action, proceeding or claim against us arising out of or relating in any way to the warrant agreement, including under the Securities Act, will be brought and enforced in the courts of the State of New York or the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, and (ii) that we irrevocably submit to such jurisdiction, which jurisdiction shall be the exclusive forum for any such action, proceeding or claim. We will waive any objection to such exclusive jurisdiction and that such courts represent an inconvenient forum.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, these provisions of the warrant agreement will not apply to suits brought to enforce any liability or duty created by the Exchange Act or any other claim for which the federal district courts of the United States of America are the sole and exclusive forum. Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring any interest in any of our warrants shall be deemed to have notice of and to have consented to the forum provisions in our warrant agreement.
If any action, the subject matter of which is within the scope of the forum provisions of the warrant agreement, is filed in a court other than a court of the State of New York or the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (a “foreign action”) in the name of any holder of our warrants, such holder shall be deemed to have consented to: (x) the personal jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in the State of New York in connection with any action brought in any such court to enforce the forum provisions (an “enforcement action”), and (y) having service of process made upon such warrant holder in any such enforcement action by service upon such warrant holder’s counsel in the foreign action as agent for such warrant holder.
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This choice-of-forum provision may limit a warrant holder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with our company, which may discourage such lawsuits. Alternatively, if a court were to find this provision of our warrant agreement inapplicable or unenforceable with respect to one or more of the specified types of actions or proceedings, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such matters in other jurisdictions, which could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations and result in a diversion of the time and resources of our management and board of directors.
We may redeem your unexpired warrants prior to their exercise at a time that is disadvantageous to you, thereby making your warrants worthless.
We have the ability to redeem outstanding warrants at any time after they become exercisable and prior to their expiration, at a price of $0.01 per warrant, provided that the last reported sales price of our Class A common stock equals or exceeds $18.00 per share for any 20 trading days within a 30 trading-day period ending on the third trading day prior to the date on which we give proper notice of such redemption and provided certain other conditions are met. If and when the warrants become redeemable by us, we may exercise our redemption right even if we are unable to register or qualify the underlying securities for sale under all applicable state securities laws. Redemption of the outstanding warrants could force you (i) to exercise your warrants and pay the exercise price therefor at a time when it may be disadvantageous for you to do so, (ii) to sell your warrants at the then-current market price when you might otherwise wish to hold your warrants or (iii) to accept the nominal redemption price which, at the time the outstanding warrants are called for redemption, is likely to be substantially less than the market value of your warrants.
In addition, we may redeem your warrants after they become exercisable for $0.10 per warrant upon a minimum of 30 days’ prior written notice of redemption provided that holders will be able to exercise their warrants prior to redemption for a number of Class A common stock determined based on the redemption date and the fair market value of our Class A common stock. The value received upon exercise of the warrants (1) may be less than the value the holders would have received if they had exercised their warrants at a later time where the underlying share price is higher and (2) may not compensate the holders for the value of the warrants, including because the number of shares of common stock received is capped at 0.361 shares of Class A common stock per warrant (subject to adjustment) irrespective of the remaining life of the warrants.
None of the private placement warrants will be redeemable by us as (except as set forth under “Description of Securities — Warrants — Public Stockholders’ Warrants — Redemption of warrants when the price per share of Class A common stock equals or exceeds $10.00” in the final prospectus related to our initial public offering) so long as they are held by our sponsor or its permitted transferees.
Because each unit contains one-half of one warrant and only a whole warrant may be exercised, the units may be worth less than units of other blank check companies.
Each unit contains one-half of one warrant. Because, pursuant to the warrant agreement, the warrants may only be exercised for a whole number of shares, only a whole warrant may be exercised at any given time. This is different from other offerings similar to ours whose units include one share of common stock and one whole warrant to purchase one share. We have established the components of the units in this way in order to reduce the dilutive effect of the warrants upon completion of a business combination since the warrants will be exercisable in the aggregate for one-half of the number of shares compared to units that each contain a warrant to purchase one whole share, thus making us, we believe, a more attractive merger partner for target businesses. Nevertheless, this unit structure may cause our units to be worth less than if they included a warrant to purchase one whole share.
We are an emerging growth company and a smaller reporting company within the meaning of the Securities Act, and if we take advantage of certain exemptions from disclosure requirements available to emerging growth companies or smaller reporting companies, this could make our securities less attractive to investors and may make it more difficult to compare our performance with other public companies.
We are an “emerging growth company” within the meaning of the Securities Act, as modified by the JOBS Act, and we may take advantage of certain exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not emerging growth companies including, but not limited to, not being required to comply with the auditor internal controls attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. As a result, our stockholders may not have access to certain information they may deem important. We could be an emerging growth company for up to five years from the date of our initial
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public offering, although circumstances could cause us to lose that status earlier, including if the market value of our Class A common stock held by non-affiliates exceeds $700 million as of the end of a prior fiscal year’s second fiscal quarter before that time, in which case we would no longer be an emerging growth company as of the following December 31. We cannot predict whether investors will find our securities less attractive because we will rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our securities less attractive as a result of our reliance on these exemptions, the trading prices of our securities may be lower than they otherwise would be, there may be a less active trading market for our securities and the trading prices of our securities may be more volatile.
Further, Section 102(b)(1) of the JOBS Act exempts emerging growth companies from being required to comply with new or revised financial accounting standards until private companies (that is, those that have not had a Securities Act registration statement declared effective or do not have a class of securities registered under the Exchange Act) are required to comply with the new or revised financial accounting standards. The JOBS Act provides that a company can elect to opt out of the extended transition period and comply with the requirements that apply to non-emerging growth companies but any such an election to opt out is irrevocable. We have elected not to opt out of such extended transition period, which means that when a standard is issued or revised and it has different application dates for public or private companies, we, as an emerging growth company, can adopt the new or revised standard at the time private companies adopt the new or revised standard. This may make comparison of our financial statements with another public company which is neither an emerging growth company nor an emerging growth company which has opted out of using the extended transition period difficult or impossible because of the potential differences in accounting standards used.
Additionally, we are a “smaller reporting company” as defined in Item 10(f)(1) of Regulation S-K. Smaller reporting companies may take advantage of certain reduced disclosure obligations, including, among other things, providing only two years of audited financial statements. We will remain a smaller reporting company until the last day of the fiscal year in which (1) the market value of our common stock held by non-affiliates exceeds $250 million as of the end of the prior fiscal year’s second fiscal quarter, and (2) our annual revenues exceeded $100 million during such completed fiscal year and the market value of our common stock held by non-affiliates exceeds $700 million as of the end of the prior fiscal year’s second fiscal quarter. To the extent we take advantage of such reduced disclosure obligations, it may also make comparison of our financial statements with other public companies difficult or impossible.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation designates the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware as the sole and exclusive forum for certain types of actions and proceedings that may be initiated by our stockholders, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with our company or our company’s directors, officers or other employees.
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that, unless we consent in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware shall, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the sole and exclusive forum for any (1) derivative action or proceeding brought on behalf of our company, (2) action asserting a claim of breach of a fiduciary duty owed by any director, officer, employee or agent of our company to our company or our stockholders, or any claim for aiding and abetting any such alleged breach, (3) action asserting a claim against our company or any director, or officer or employee of our company arising pursuant to any provision of the DGCL or our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or our bylaws, or (4) action asserting a claim against us or any director, or officer or employee of our company governed by the internal affairs doctrine except for, as to each of (1) through (4) above, any claim (a) as to which the Court of Chancery determines that there is an indispensable party not subject to the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery (and the indispensable party does not consent to the personal jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery within ten days following such determination), (b) which is vested in the exclusive jurisdiction of a court or forum other than the Court of Chancery, or (c) arising under the federal securities laws, including the Securities Act, as to which the Court of Chancery and the federal district court for the District of Delaware shall concurrently be the sole and exclusive forums. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the provisions of this paragraph will not apply to suits brought to enforce any liability or duty created by the Exchange Act or any other claim for which the federal district courts of the United States of America shall be the sole and exclusive forum. Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring any interest in any shares of our capital stock shall be deemed to have notice of and to have consented to the forum provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation. If any action the subject matter of which is within the scope the forum provisions is filed in a court other than a court located within the State of Delaware (a “foreign action”) in the name of any stockholder, such stockholder shall be deemed to have consented to: (x) the personal jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located within the State of Delaware in connection with any action brought in any such court to enforce the forum provisions (an “enforcement action”); and (y) having service of process made upon such stockholder in any such enforcement action by service upon such stockholder’s counsel in the foreign action as agent for such stockholder.
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This choice-of-forum provision may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with our company or its directors, officers or other employees, which may discourage such lawsuits.
Alternatively, if a court were to find this provision of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation inapplicable or unenforceable with respect to one or more of the specified types of actions or proceedings, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such matters in other jurisdictions, which could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations and result in a diversion of the time and resources of our management and board of directors.
If we effect our initial business combination with a company with operations or opportunities outside of the United States, we would be subject to a variety of additional risks that may negatively impact our operations.
If we effect our initial business combination with a company with operations or opportunities outside of the United States, we would be subject to any special considerations or risks associated with companies operating in an international setting, including any of the following:
| ● | higher costs and difficulties inherent in managing cross-border business operations and complying with different commercial and legal requirements of overseas markets; |
| ● | rules and regulations regarding currency redemption; |
| ● | complex corporate withholding taxes on individuals; |
| ● | laws governing the manner in which future business combinations may be effected; |
| ● | tariffs and trade barriers; |
| ● | regulations related to customs and import/export matters; |
| ● | longer payment cycles and challenges in collecting accounts receivable; |
| ● | tax issues, such as tax law changes and variations in tax laws as compared to the United States; |
| ● | currency fluctuations and exchange controls; |
| ● | rates of inflation; |
| ● | cultural and language differences; |
| ● | employment regulations; |
| ● | crime, strikes, riots, civil disturbances, terrorist attacks, natural disasters and wars; |
| ● | deterioration of political relations with the United States; and |
| ● | government appropriations of assets. |
We may not be able to adequately address these additional risks. If we were unable to do so, our operations might suffer, which may adversely impact our results of operations and financial condition.
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Cyber incidents or attacks directed at us could result in information theft, data corruption, operational disruption and/or financial loss.
We depend on digital technologies, including information systems, infrastructure and cloud applications and services, including those of third parties with which we may deal. Sophisticated and deliberate attacks on, or security breaches in, our systems or infrastructure, or the systems or infrastructure of third parties or the cloud, could lead to corruption or misappropriation of our assets, proprietary information and sensitive or confidential data. As an early stage company without significant investments in data security protection, we may not be sufficiently protected against such occurrences. We may not have sufficient resources to adequately protect against, or to investigate and remediate any vulnerability to, cyber incidents. It is possible that any of these occurrences, or a combination of them, could have adverse consequences on our business and lead to financial loss.
Since only holders of our founder shares will have the right to vote on the election of directors, the NYSE may consider us to be a “controlled company” within the meaning of the NYSE rules and, as a result, we may qualify for exemptions from certain corporate governance requirements.
Until we complete our initial business combination, only holders of our founder shares will have the right to vote on the election of directors. As a result, the NYSE may consider us to be a “controlled company” within the meaning of the NYSE corporate governance standards. Under the NYSE corporate governance standards, a company of which more than 50% of the voting power is held by an individual, group or another company is a “controlled company” and may elect not to comply with certain corporate governance requirements, including the requirements that:
| ● | we have a board that includes a majority of “independent directors,” as defined under the rules of the NYSE; |
| ● | we have a compensation committee of our board that is comprised entirely of independent directors with a written charter addressing the committee’s purpose and responsibilities; and |
| ● | we have a nominating and corporate governance committee of our board that is comprised entirely of independent directors with a written charter addressing the committee’s purpose and responsibilities. |
| ● | We do not intend to utilize these exemptions and intend to comply with the corporate governance requirements of the NYSE, subject to applicable phase-in rules. However, if we determine in the future to utilize some or all of these exemptions, you will not have the same protections afforded to stockholders of companies that are subject to all of the NYSE corporate governance requirements. |
ITEM 1B.UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS
None.
ITEM 2.PROPERTIES
Our executive offices are located at 1545 Courtney Ave, Los Angeles, California 90046, and our telephone number is (646) 432-0610. Our executive offices are provided to us by an affiliate of our sponsor. Since September 3, 2020, we have paid an affiliate of our sponsor a total of $10,000 per month for office space, utilities and secretarial and administrative support. We consider our current office space adequate for our current operations.
ITEM 3.LEGAL PROCEEDINGS
To the knowledge of our management, there is no litigation currently pending or contemplated against us, any of our officers or directors in their capacity as such or against any of our property.
ITEM 4.MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES
Not applicable.
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PART II
ITEM 5.MARKET FOR REGISTRANT’S COMMON EQUITY, RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS AND ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES
(a) Market Information
Our units, shares of Class A common stock and warrants are each traded on the NYSE under the symbol “TWND.U”, “TWND” and “TWND WS” respectively. Our units commenced public trading on September 4, 2020. Our shares of Class A common stock and warrants began separate trading on October 23, 2020.
(b) Holders
As of December 31, 2021, there was one holder of record for our units, one holder of record for our shares of Class A common stock, one holder of our shares of Class B common stock and two holders of our warrants.
(c) Dividends
We have not paid any cash dividends on our common stock to date and do not intend to pay cash dividends prior to the completion of an initial business combination. The payment of cash dividends in the future will be dependent upon our revenues and earnings, if any, capital requirements and general financial conditions subsequent to completion of an initial business combination. The payment of any cash dividends subsequent to an initial business combination will be within the discretion of our board of directors at such time. In addition, our board of directors is not currently contemplating and does not anticipate declaring any stock dividends in the foreseeable future. Further, if we incur any indebtedness, our ability to declare dividends may be limited by restrictive covenants we may agree to in connection therewith.
(d) Securities Authorized for Issuance Under Equity Compensation Plans
None.
(e) Performance Graph
Not applicable.
(f) Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities; Use of Proceeds from Registered Offerings
In June 2020, Tailwind Sponsor LLC, our sponsor, purchased 8,625,000 shares of our Class B common stock, for an aggregate offering price of $25,000, or approximately $0.003 per share. Such securities were issued in connection with our organization pursuant to the exemption from registration contained in Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act.
Our sponsor is an accredited investor for purposes of Rule 501 of Regulation D under the Securities Act.
Simultaneously with the closing of the initial public offering, the Sponsor purchased an aggregate of 9,700,000 private placement warrants, at a price of $1.00 per private placement warrant, or $9,700,000 in the aggregate. Each private placement warrant is exercisable to purchase one share of common stock at an exercise price of $11.50 per share, subject to adjustment. These issuances were made pursuant to the exemption from registration contained in Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act.
No underwriting discounts or commissions were paid with respect to such sales.
(g) Purchases of Equity Securities by the Issuer and Affiliated Purchasers
None.
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ITEM 6.SELECTED FINANCIAL DATA
Not applicable.
ITEM 7.MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS
The following discussion and analysis of the Company’s financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our audited financial statements and the notes related thereto which are included in “Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data” of this Report on Form 10-K. Certain information contained in the discussion and analysis set forth below includes forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of many factors, including those set forth under “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements,” “Item 1A. Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Report.
Overview
We are a blank check company formed under the laws of the State of Delaware on May 29, 2020 for the purpose of effecting a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or other similar business combination with one or more businesses. We intend to effectuate our business combination using cash from the proceeds of the Initial Public Offering and the sale of the private placement warrants, our capital stock, debt or a combination of cash, stock and debt.
Recent Developments
On March 1, 2021, we entered into the business combination Agreement with Merger Sub, QOMPLX and the QOMPLX Stockholder Representative. On August 17, 2021, the Company and QOMPLX terminated the business combination Agreement in a mutual decision not to pursue the QOMPLX business combination.
Results of Operations
We have neither engaged in any operations nor generated any revenues to date. Our only activities from May 29, 2020 (inception) through December 31, 2021 were organizational activities, those necessary to prepare for our initial public offering, described below, and identifying a target company for a business combination. We do not expect to generate any operating revenues until after the completion of our business combination. We generate non-operating income in the form of interest income on marketable securities held in the trust account. We incur expenses as a result of being a public company (for legal, financial reporting, accounting and auditing compliance), as well as for due diligence expenses.
For the year ended December 31, 2021, we had a net income of $17,789,488, which consists of the interest earned on marketable securities held in trust account of $120,063 and a change in fair value of warrant liabilities of $23,241,491, offset by operational costs of $5,572,066.
For the period from May 29, 2020 (inception) through December 31, 2020, we had a net loss of $17,900,526, which consists of interest earned on marketable securities held in trust account of $105,431 offset by formation and operational costs of $387,335, change in fair value of warrant liabilities of $16,902,902 and transaction costs associated with our initial public offering of $715,720.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
On September 9, 2020, we consummated our initial public offering of 33,421,570 units at a price of $10.00 per unit, which includes the partial exercise by the underwriter of its over-allotment option in the amount of 3,421,570 units, generating gross proceeds of $334,215,700. Simultaneously with the closing of our initial public offering, we consummated the sale of 9,700,000 private placement warrants at a price of $1.00 per private placement warrant in a private placement to the Sponsor, generating gross proceeds of $9,700,000.
Following our initial public offering, the partial exercise of the over-allotment option by the underwriter’s and the sale of the private placement warrants, a total of $334,215,700 was placed in the trust account. We incurred $18,847,894 in transaction costs, including $6,684,314 of underwriting fees, net of reimbursement, $11,697,550 of deferred underwriting fees and $466,030 of other offering costs.
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For the year ended December 31, 2021, cash used in operating activities was $1,749,104. Net income of $17,789,488 was affected by a change in fair value of warrant liabilities of $23,241,491 and interest earned on marketable securities held in the trust account of $120,063. Changes in operating assets and liabilities provided $3,822,962 of cash from operating activities.
For the period from May 29, 2020 (inception) through December 31, 2020, cash used in operating activities was $454,858. Net loss of $17,900,526 was affected by the transaction costs associated with our initial public offering of $715,720, change in fair value of warrant liabilities of $16,902,902 and interest earned on marketable securities held in trust account of $105,431. Changes in operating assets and liabilities used $67,523 of cash from operating activities.
As of December 31, 2021, we had marketable securities and cash held in the trust account of $334,441,194. We intend to use substantially all of the funds held in the trust account, including any amounts representing interest earned on the trust account to complete our business combination. To the extent that our capital stock or debt is used, in whole or in part, as consideration to complete our business combination, the remaining proceeds held in the trust accountt will be used as working capital to finance the operations of the target business or businesses, make other acquisitions and pursue our growth strategies.
As of December 31, 2021, we had $479,694 of cash held outside of the trust account. We intend to use the funds held outside the trust account primarily to identify and evaluate target businesses, perform business due diligence on prospective target businesses, travel to and from the offices, plants or similar locations of prospective target businesses or their representatives or owners, review corporate documents and material agreements of prospective target businesses, and structure, negotiate and complete a business combination.
In order to fund working capital deficiencies or finance transaction costs in connection with a business combination, the sponsor, or certain of the Company’s officers and directors or their affiliates may, but are not obligated to, loan us funds as may be required. If we complete a business combination, we would repay the working capital loans out of the proceeds of the trust account released to us. Otherwise, the working capital loans would be repaid only out of funds held outside the trust account. In the event that a business combination does not close, we may use a portion of proceeds held outside the Trust Account to repay the working capital loans but no proceeds held in the trust account would be used to repay the Working Capital Loans. The working capital loans would either be repaid upon consummation of a business combination, without interest, or, at the lender’s discretion, up to $1,500,000 of such working capital loans may be convertible into warrants, at a price of $1.00 per warrant, of the post business combination entity. The warrants would be identical to the private placement warrants. Except for the foregoing, the terms of such working capital loans, if any, have not been determined and no written agreements exist with respect to such loans.
If our estimate of the costs of identifying a target business, undertaking in-depth due diligence and negotiating a business combination are less than the actual amount necessary to do so, we may have insufficient funds available to operate our business prior to our business combination. Moreover, we may need to obtain additional financing either to complete our business combination or because we become obligated to redeem a significant number of our public shares upon consummation of our business combination, in which case we may issue additional securities or incur debt in connection with such business combination.
Going Concern and Liquidity
We have until September 9, 2022 to consummate an initial business combination. It is uncertain that we will have sufficient liquidity to fund the working capital needs of the Company until the liquidation date. Additionally, it is uncertain that we will be able to consummate an initial business combination by this time. The Company may not have sufficient liquidity to fund the working capital needs of the Company until one year from the issuance of the financial statements included in this Report. If an initial business combination is not consummated by this date, there will be a mandatory liquidation and subsequent dissolution. Management has determined that the mandatory liquidation, should an initial business combination not occur, and potential subsequent dissolution raises substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern. No adjustments have been made to the carrying amounts of assets or liabilities should we be required to liquidate after September 9, 2022.
Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements
We have no obligations, assets or liabilities, which would be considered off-balance sheet arrangements as of December 31, 2021. We do not participate in transactions that create relationships with unconsolidated entities or financial partnerships, often referred to as variable interest entities, which would have been established for the purpose of facilitating off-balance sheet arrangements. We have not
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entered into any off-balance sheet financing arrangements, established any special purpose entities, guaranteed any debt or commitments of other entities, or purchased any non-financial assets.
Contractual Obligations
We do not have any long-term debt, capital lease obligations, operating lease obligations or long-term liabilities, other than an agreement to pay an affiliate of our sponsor a monthly fee of $10,000 for office space, utilities and secretarial, and administrative support services to the Company. We began incurring these fees on September 9, 2020 and will continue to incur these fees monthly until the earlier of the completion of our business combination and the Company’s liquidation.
The underwriter in the initial public offering is entitled to a deferred fee of $0.35 per unit, or $11,697,550 in the aggregate. The deferred fee will become payable to the underwriter from the amounts held in the trust account solely in the event that the Company completes a business combination, subject to the terms of the underwriting agreement.
Critical Accounting Policies
The preparation of consolidated financial statements and related disclosures in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities, disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the consolidated financial statements, and income and expenses during the period reported. Actual results could materially differ from those estimates. We have identified the following critical accounting policies:
Warrant Liabilities
We account for the Warrants in accordance with the guidance contained in ASC 815-40 under which the Warrants do not meet the criteria for equity treatment and must be recorded as liabilities. Accordingly, we classify the Warrants as liabilities at their fair value and adjust the Warrants to fair value at each reporting period. This liability is subject to re-measurement at each balance sheet date until exercised, and any change in fair value is recognized in our consolidated statements of operations.
Class A Common Stock Subject to Possible Redemption
We account for our common stock subject to possible redemption in accordance with the guidance in Accounting Standards Codification (“ASC”) Topic 480 “Distinguishing Liabilities from Equity.” Common stock subject to mandatory redemption is classified as a liability instrument and is measured at fair value. Conditionally redeemable common stock (including common stock that features redemption rights that are either within the control of the holder or subject to redemption upon the occurrence of uncertain events not solely within our control) is classified as temporary equity. At all other times, common stock is classified as stockholders’ equity. Our common stock features certain redemption rights that are considered to be outside of our control and subject to occurrence of uncertain future events. Accordingly, the common stock subject to possible redemption is presented as temporary equity, outside of the stockholders’ deficit section of our consolidated balance sheets.
Net Income ( Loss) Per Common Share
Net income (loss) per common stock is computed by dividing net income (loss) by the weighted average number of common stock outstanding for the period. We have two classes of shares, which are referred to as Class A common stock and Class B common stock. Income and losses are shared pro rata between the two classes of shares. Accretion associated with the redeemable shares of Class A common stock is excluded from earnings per share as the redemption value approximates fair value.
Recent Accounting Pronouncements
In August 2020, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) issued Accounting Standards Update (“ASU”) 2020-06, Debt — Debt with Conversion and Other Options (Subtopic 470-20) and Derivatives and Hedging — Contracts in Entity’s Own Equity (Subtopic 815-40) (“ASU 2020-06”) to simplify accounting for certain financial instruments. ASU 2020-06 eliminates the current models that require separation of beneficial conversion and cash conversion features from convertible instruments and simplifies the derivative scope exception guidance pertaining to equity classification of contracts in an entity’s own equity. The new standard also introduces
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additional disclosures for convertible debt and freestanding instruments that are indexed to and settled in an entity’s own equity. ASU 2020-06 amends the diluted earnings per share guidance, including the requirement to use the if-converted method for all convertible instruments. ASU 2020-06 is effective January 1, 2022 and should be applied on a full or modified retrospective basis, with early adoption permitted beginning on January 1, 2021. We adopted ASU 2020-06 effective January 1, 2021. The adoption of ASU 2020-06 did not have an impact on our consolidated financial statements.
Management does not believe that any other recently issued, but not yet effective, accounting standards, if currently adopted, would have a material effect on our consolidated financial statements.
ITEM 7A.QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK
We are a smaller reporting company as defined by Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act and are not required to provide the information otherwise required under this item.
ITEM 8.FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AND SUPPLEMENTARY DATA
This information appears following Item 15 of this Report and is included herein by reference.
ITEM 9.CHANGES IN AND DISAGREEMENTS WITH ACCOUNTANTS ON ACCOUNTING AND FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE
None.
ITEM 9A.CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES
Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures
Disclosure controls are procedures that are designed with the objective of ensuring that information required to be disclosed in our reports filed under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized, and reported within the time period specified in the SEC’s rules and forms. Disclosure controls are also designed with the objective of ensuring that such information is accumulated and communicated to our management, including the chief executive officer and chief financial officer, as appropriate to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure.
As required by Rules 13a-15 and 15d-15 under the Exchange Act, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer carried out an evaluation of the effectiveness of the design and operation of our disclosure controls and procedures as of December 31, 2021. Based upon their evaluation, our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Exchange Act) were not effective, due to the material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting related to the Company’s accounting for complex financial instruments. As a result, we performed additional analysis as deemed necessary to ensure that our financial statements were prepared in accordance with GAAP. Accordingly, management believes that the financial statements included in this Report present fairly in all material respects our financial position, results of operations and cash flows for the period presented.
Management has identified a material weakness in internal controls related to the accounting for complex financial instruments. While we have processes to identify and appropriately apply applicable accounting requirements, we plan to continue to enhance our system of evaluating and implementing the accounting standards that apply to our financial statements, including through enhanced analyses by our personnel and third-party professionals with whom we consult regarding complex accounting applications. The elements of our remediation plan can only be accomplished over time, and we can offer no assurance that these initiatives will ultimately have the intended effects.
Management’s Report on Internal Controls Over Financial Reporting
As required by SEC rules and regulations implementing Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, our management is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting. Our internal control over financial reporting is designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of our consolidated financial
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statements for external reporting purposes in accordance with GAAP. Our internal control over financial reporting includes those policies and procedures that:
| (1) | pertain to the maintenance of records that, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of our company, |
| (2) | provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of consolidated financial statements in accordance with GAAP, and that our receipts and expenditures are being made only in accordance with authorizations of our management and directors, and |
| (3) | provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use or disposition of our assets that could have a material effect on the consolidated financial statements. |
Because of its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting may not prevent or detect errors or misstatements in our consolidated financial statements. Also, projections of any evaluation of effectiveness to future periods are subject to the risk that controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or that the degree or compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate. Management assessed the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting at December 31, 2021. In making these assessments, management used the criteria set forth by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) in Internal Control — Integrated Framework (2013). Based on our assessments and those criteria, management determined that we did not maintain effective internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2021 because of material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. Specifically, the company’s management has concluded that our control around the interpretation and accounting for certain complex financial instruments was not effectively designed or maintained. This material weakness resulted in the misstatement of the Company’s audited balance sheet as of September 9, 2020 and its interim financial statements and Notes as reported in its SEC filings for the quarters ended March 31, 2021, June 30, 2021 and September 30, 2021.
Management has implemented remediation steps to improve our internal control over financial reporting. Specifically, we expanded and improved our review process for complex securities and related accounting standards. We plan to further improve this process by enhancing access to accounting literature, identification of third-party professionals with whom to consult regarding complex accounting applications and consideration of additional staff with the requisite experience and training to supplement existing accounting professionals.
This Report on Form 10-K does not include an attestation report of our independent registered public accounting firm due to our status as an emerging growth company under the JOBS Act.
Changes in Internal Control over Financial Reporting
There were no changes in our internal control over financial reporting during the most recent fiscal quarter that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting, except as described below.
The Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer performed additional accounting and financial analyses and other postclosing procedures including consulting with subject matter experts related to the accounting for certain complex financial instruments. The Company’s management has expended, and will continue to expend, a substantial amount of effort and resources for the remediation and improvement of our internal control over financial reporting. While we have processes to properly identify and evaluate the appropriate accounting technical pronouncements and other literature for all significant or unusual transactions, we have expanded and will continue to improve these processes to ensure that the nuances of such transactions are effectively evaluated in the context of the increasingly complex accounting standards
Item 9B. Other Information
None.
Item 9C. Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdiction that Prevent Inspections.
Note Applicable.
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PART III
ITEM 10.DIRECTORS, EXECUTIVE OFFICERS AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
Officers and Directors
Our officers and directors are as follows:
Name |
| Age |
| Position |
|
Philip Krim | 38 | Chairman | |||
Chris Hollod | 38 | Chief Executive Officer and Director | |||
Matt Eby | 49 | Chief Financial Officer and Director | |||
Alan Sheriff | 62 | Director | |||
Wisdom Lu | 55 | Director | |||
Boris Revsin | 36 | Director | |||
Will Quist | 40 | Director |
Philip Krim, our Chairman, was appointed to our board of directors in connection with our initial public offering. Mr. Krim has served as Casper Sleep Inc.’s Chief Executive Officer and as a member of its board of directors since October 2013. Since founding the Company in 2013, Mr. Krim has led Casper through tremendous growth, growing revenue from $15 million in 2014 to $497 million in 2020 (approximately 79% CAGR), and successfully took the company public in February 2020. Mr. Krim brought an innovative data-driven approach to marketing at Casper which enabled exponential growth and a competitive advantage. He is responsible for leading Casper’s expansion into adjacent sleep related product areas and increasing the retail store footprint to over 50+ stores across the US. Prior to that, Mr. Krim was the Chief Executive Officer of Vocalize Mobile, a mobile search advertising platform for small businesses, from January 2010 until July 2013, and the Chief Executive Officer of The Merrick Group from January 2003 until December 2009. Since 2016, Mr. Krim has also served on the Emerging Leadership Council of the 92nd Street Y. He also serves as a director of the Travis Manion Foundation and as a member of the Leadership Council of the Robin Hood Foundation since 2019. Mr. Krim received a B.B.A. in Marketing from Red McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. We believe Mr. Krim’s operational and executive experience make him well-qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors.
Chris Hollod, our Chief Executive Officer, was appointed to our board of directors in connection with our initial public offering. Mr. Hollod is the Founder and Managing Partner of Hollod Holdings, a private venture capital and advisory firm based in Los Angeles that invests in innovative consumer brands at the convergence of culture and wellness. Over the course of his career, Mr. Hollod has completed more than 150 deals across five different investment entities, including investments in Airbnb, Uber, Spotify, Houzz, Duolingo, Airtable, Warby Parker, Oscar, Flexport, Sweetgreen, Memphis Meats and Thrive Market. From 2010 to 2018, Mr. Hollod was the Managing Partner of A-Grade Investments alongside Ashton Kutcher, Ron Burkle and Guy Oseary. Mr. Hollod was also the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Inevitable Ventures with Ron Burkle and D.A. Wallach from 2015 to 2018. From 2009 to 2017, Mr. Hollod was the Venture Partner at Ron Burkle’s private investment firm, The Yucaipa Companies, where he oversaw Mr. Burkle’s venture capital investments. Prior to joining The Yucaipa Companies, Mr. Hollod spent four years as an investment banker at Wachovia Securities, where he executed a variety of debt and equity transactions. Mr. Hollod graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Vanderbilt University with a B.A. in Economics, Finance and Philosophy. We believe Mr. Hollod’s operational and executive experience make him well-qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors.
Matt Eby, our Chief Financial Officer, was appointed to our board of directors in connection with our initial public offering. Mr. Eby is the Founder and Managing Partner of Seawall Capital, a private equity firm formed to invest in the consumer and other related sectors. At Seawall Capital, Mr. Eby is responsible for originating, underwriting and monitoring of investments and manages the daily activities of the firm. Prior to the founding of Seawall, Mr. Eby was the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Tengram Capital Partners. He currently serves as the Chairman of the board of directors of Kent Water Sports, El Cap Holdings and Lime Crime, and as a director of Algenist, Revive, and Cos Bar. In the past he has served as Chairman of Tengram former portfolio companies NEST Fragrances and DevaCurl. Prior to founding Tengram, Mr. Eby was the Chief Investment Officer of JAWS Estates Capital, the private investment office of Barry Sternlicht and the Sternlicht family, where he was responsible for investment and asset allocation decisions and recommendations across a broad spectrum of asset classes and investment strategies. While at JAWS Estates Capital, Mr. Eby led numerous transactions including investments in Palantir Technologies, Field Stream, Ellen Tracy, Joe’s Jeans, Caribbean Joe, and Carlos Falchi. In 2009, in his capacity as Chief Investment Officer of Jaws Estates Capital and on behalf of Starwood Capital Group, he
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led the initial public offering of Starwood Property Trust (NYSE: STWD), a mortgage REIT focused on commercial real estate properties. Prior to JAWS, he was an Associate at Morgan Stanley. Mr. Eby currently serves as a director of Tailwind International Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: TWNI), a special purpose acquisition company which raised $345 million in aggregate capital in its initial public offering in February 2021. Mr. Eby received a B.S. from the United States Naval Academy and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. We believe Mr. Eby’s operational and executive experience make him well-qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors.
Alan Sheriff was appointed to our board of directors in connection with our initial public offering. Mr. Sheriff co-founded Solebury Capital in 2005 and served as its Co-Chief Executive Officer from 2005 to 2020. Mr. Sheriff has also served as Vice Chairman of Corporate and Institutional Banking, PNC Financial Services Group since 2020. Under his guidance and leadership, Solebury Capital has become a premier independent equity capital advisory firm, known for bringing deep product expertise, market knowledge and unbiased advice to its clients. At Solebury Capital, Mr. Sheriff has personally worked on hundreds of IPOs, follow-ons and block trades and has provided general capital markets counsel to financial sponsors such as Bain Capital, Ares Management, Apollo, American Securities, TH Lee, Freeman Spogli, TSG Consumer and many others. Mr. Sheriff has also worked directly with companies such as Nielson, Dunkin Brands, Canada Goose, BRP (Bombardier Recreational Products), Aramark, Black Knight Financial, Patheon, Planet Fitness and Casper Sleep. Prior to founding Solebury Capital, Mr. Sheriff held several senior-level positions at Credit Suisse First Boston, including serving as Co-Head of Equity Capital Markets for the Americas from 1999 to 2005. Mr. Sheriff also chaired Credit Suisse’s Equity Valuation Committee from 1999 to 2005 and sat on the firm’s Investment Banking Committee from 2001 to 2005. Mr. Sheriff began his career at Salomon Brothers where he worked from 1983 to 1992. Mr. Sheriff currently serves as a director of Tailwind International Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: TWNI), a special purpose acquisition company which raised $345 million in aggregate capital in its initial public offering in February 2021. Mr. Sheriff graduated from the University of Rochester in 1981 with a B.A. in Political Science, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa. He also received an MPA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations since 1999, the NationSwell Council since 2016 and the Travis Manion Foundation since 2018. Mr. Sheriff has also served on the board of PsychHub since 2019. We believe that Mr. Sheriff’s executive and institutional banking experience make him well-qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors.
Wisdom Lu was appointed to our board of directors in connection with our initial public offering. Ms. Lu is a Founding Partner of Stibel Co. and Bryant Stibel, specializing in growth equity investments across technology, media, data, sports and wellness. Ms. Lu currently serves as director of Tailwind International Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: TWNI), a special purpose acquisition company which raised $345 million in aggregate capital in its initial public offering in February 2021 and Fifth Wall Acquisition Corp. I (NASDAQ: FWAA). Ms. Lu has previously served as the Chief Financial Officer at Dun Bradstreet Credibility Corp. from 2014 to 2017 and as its Senior Vice President, Data Works from 2012 to 2014. At Dun Bradstreet, she served as Chief Financial Officer of Dun Bradstreet Emerging Businesses from 2015 to 2017. From 2008 to 2012, Ms. Lu served as the Chief Financial Officer at Liberman Broadcasting and oversaw Finance, Information Technology, Human Resources, as well as Legal and Investor Relations. From 1996 to 2008, Ms. Lu served as Chief Investment Officer and Treasurer at Health Net, Inc. where she oversaw a $3 billion investment portfolio. Before Health Net, Inc., Ms. Lu served as Treasury Officer, Fixed Income Sales Trading with National Westminster Bank. Ms. Lu graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a B.S. in Engineering and a minor in Economics. She also received an MBA from New York University. Ms. Lu is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and holds a Professional Engineering license in the state of New York. We believe Ms. Lu’s operational and executive experience make her well-qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors.
Boris Revsin was appointed to our board of directors in September 2021. Mr. Revsin is currently serving as the Managing Director and Head of Private Capital at Republic. The Private Capital team at Republic manages over $300M in net assets, primarily focusing on frontier and financial technology. At Republic, Mr. Revsin is responsible for sourcing, managing the analyst team that underwrites investments, and serving as an advisor or board member to portfolio companies. At Republic, Mr. Revsin led investments into Robinhood, EquipmentShare, Long Term Stock Exchange, Relativity Space and many others. In the past, Mr. Revsin was the co-founder of VentureApp, now known as HqO, a leading property technology company backed with over $40M in venture capital. Prior to VentureApp, Mr. Revsin served as the co-founder of Breaktime Media, an advertising technology company, which he sold to Connelly Partners in 2015. Breaktime Media raised over $15million in venture capital from leading firms like Highland Capital and Charles River Ventures. Prior to Breaktime Media, Mr. Revsin worked as the lead engineer and project manager for eNilsson, the development and design agency attached to the 2008 Mitt Romney For President campaign. Mr. Revsin studied computer science at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. We believe Mr. Revsin’s operational and executive experience make him well-qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors.
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Will Quist was appointed to our board of directors in connection with our initial public offering. Mr. Quist has served as a Partner at Slow Ventures since November 2015. Prior to joining Slow Ventures, he was a Managing Director at Industry Ventures from September 2007 to October 2015 and worked as an Analyst at Banc of America Securities LLC from August 2005 to July 2007. Mr. Quist received a B.A. in Political Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley. We believe Mr. Quist's operational and executive experience make him well-qualified to serve as a member of our board of directors.
Number and Terms of Office of Officers and Directors
Our board of directors is divided into three classes with only one class of directors being elected in each year and each class (except for those directors appointed prior to our first annual meeting of stockholders) serving a three-year term. The term of office of the first class of directors, consisting of Wisdom Lu, Will Quist and Boris Revsin, will expire at our first annual meeting of stockholders. The term of office of the second class of directors, consisting of Alan Sheriff and Chris Hollod, will expire at the second annual meeting of stockholders. The term of office of the third class of directors, consisting of Philip Krim and Matt Eby, will expire at the third annual meeting of stockholders. We may not hold an annual meeting of stockholders until after we consummate our initial business combination.
Prior to the completion of an initial business combination, any vacancy on the board of directors may be filled by a nominee chosen by holders of a majority of our founder shares. In addition, prior to the completion of an initial business combination, holders of a majority of our founder shares may remove a member of the board of directors for any reason.
Pursuant to an agreement entered into concurrently with the issuance and sale of the securities in our initial public offering, our sponsor, upon consummation of an initial business combination will be entitled to nominate three individuals for election to our board of directors.
Our officers are appointed by the board of directors and serve at the discretion of the board of directors, rather than for specific terms of office. Our board of directors is authorized to appoint persons to the offices set forth in our bylaws as it deems appropriate. Our bylaws provide that our officers may consist of a Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, President, Chief Financial Officer, Vice Presidents, Secretary, Treasurer and such other offices as may be determined by the board of directors.
Director Independence
The NYSE listing standards require that a majority of our board of directors be independent. An “independent director” is defined generally as a person that, in the opinion of the company’s board of directors, has no material relationship with the listed company (either directly or as a partner, stockholder or officer of an organization that has a relationship with the company). Our board of directors determined that Alan Sheriff, Wisdom Lu, Will Quist and Boris Revsin are “independent directors” as defined in the NYSE listing standards and applicable SEC rules. Our independent directors will have regularly scheduled meetings at which only independent directors are present.
Committees of the Board of Directors
Our board of directors has three standing committees: an audit committee; a nominating committee; and a compensation committee. Subject to phase-in rules and a limited exception, the rules of the NYSE and Rule 10A-3 of the Exchange Act require that the audit committee of a listed company be comprised solely of independent directors, and the rules of the NYSE require that the nominating and compensation committees of a listed company be comprised solely of independent directors.
Audit Committee
Wisdom Lu, Will Quist and Boris Revsin serve as members of our audit committee, and Wisdom Lu serves as chairman of the audit committee. Our board of directors has determined that each of Wisdom Lu, Will Quist and Boris Revsin are independent.
Each member of the audit committee is financially literate and our board of directors has determined that Wisdom Lu qualifies as an “audit committee financial expert” as defined in applicable SEC rules, and will chair the audit committee.
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The audit committee is responsible for:
| ● | the appointment, compensation, retention, replacement, and oversight of the work of the independent registered public accounting firm and any other independent registered public accounting firm engaged by us; |
| ● | pre-approving all audit and permitted non-audit services to be provided by the independent registered public accounting firm or any other registered public accounting firm engaged by us, and establishing pre-approval policies and procedures; |
| ● | reviewing and discussing with the independent registered public accounting firm all relationships they have with us in order to evaluate their continued independence; |
| ● | setting clear hiring policies for employees or former employees of the independent registered public accounting firm; |
| ● | setting clear policies for audit partner rotation in compliance with applicable laws and regulations; |
| ● | obtaining and reviewing a report, at least annually, from the independent registered public accounting firm describing (i) the independent registered public accounting firm’s internal quality-control procedures and (ii) any material issues raised by the most recent internal quality-control review, or peer review, of the independent registered public accounting firm, or by any inquiry or investigation by governmental or professional authorities within the preceding five years respecting one or more independent audits carried out by the firm and any steps taken to deal with such issues; and |
| ● | reviewing and approving any related party transaction required to be disclosed pursuant to Item 404 of Regulation S-K promulgated by the SEC prior to us entering into such transaction; and reviewing with management, the independent registered public accounting firm, and our legal advisors, as appropriate, any legal, regulatory or compliance matters, including any correspondence with regulators or government agencies and any employee complaints or published reports that raise material issues regarding our financial statements or accounting policies and any significant changes in accounting standards or rules promulgated by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the SEC or other regulatory authorities. |
Nominating Committee
The members of our nominating committee are Alan Sheriff, Wisdom Lu and Will Quist, and Alan Sheriff serves as chairman of the nominating committee. Under the NYSE listing standards, we are required to have a nominating committee composed entirely of independent directors. Our board of directors has determined that each of Alan Sheriff, Wisdom Lu and Will Quist are independent. The nominating committee is responsible for overseeing the selection of persons to be nominated to serve on our board of directors. The nominating committee considers persons identified by its members, management, stockholders, investment bankers and others.
Guidelines for Selecting Director Nominees
The guidelines for selecting nominees, which are specified by a charter adopted by us, generally provide that persons to be nominated:
| ● | should have demonstrated notable or significant achievements in business, education or public service; |
| ● | should possess the requisite intelligence, education and experience to make a significant contribution to the board of directors and bring a range of skills, diverse perspectives and backgrounds to its deliberations; and |
| ● | should have the highest ethical standards, a strong sense of professionalism and intense dedication to serving the interests of the stockholders. |
The nominating committee will consider a number of qualifications relating to management and leadership experience, background and integrity and professionalism in evaluating a person’s candidacy for membership on the board of directors. The nominating committee may require certain skills or attributes, such as financial or accounting experience, to meet specific board needs that arise from time to time and will also consider the overall experience and makeup of its members to obtain a broad and diverse mix of board members. The nominating committee does not distinguish among nominees recommended by stockholders and other persons.
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Compensation Committee
The members of our compensation committee are Wisdom Lu, Will Quist and Boris Revsin, and Boris Revsin serves as chairman of the compensation committee. Under the NYSE listing standards, we are required to have a nominating committee composed entirely of independent directors. Our board of directors has determined that each of Wisdom Lu, Will Quist and Boris Revsin are independent.
We adopted a compensation committee charter, which details the principal functions of the compensation committee, including:
| ● | reviewing and approving on an annual basis the corporate goals and objectives relevant to our Chief Executive Officer’s compensation, evaluating our Chief Executive Officer’s performance in light of such goals and objectives and determining and approving the remuneration (if any) of our Chief Executive Officer based on such evaluation; |
| ● | reviewing and approving on an annual basis the compensation of all of our other officers; |
| ● | reviewing on an annual basis our executive compensation policies and plans; |
| ● | implementing and administering our incentive compensation equity-based remuneration plans; |
| ● | assisting management in complying with our proxy statement and annual report disclosure requirements; |
| ● | approving all special perquisites, special cash payments and other special compensation and benefit arrangements for our officers and employees; |
| ● | if required, producing a report on executive compensation to be included in our annual proxy statement; and |
| ● | reviewing, evaluating and recommending changes, if appropriate, to the remuneration for directors. |
Notwithstanding the foregoing, as indicated above, other than the $10,000 per month administrative fee payable to an affiliate of our sponsor and reimbursement of expenses, no compensation of any kind, including finders, consulting or other similar fees, will be paid to any of our existing stockholders, officers, directors or any of their respective affiliates, prior to, or for any services they render in order to effectuate the consummation of a business combination. Accordingly, it is likely that prior to the consummation of an initial business combination, the compensation committee will only be responsible for the review and recommendation of any compensation arrangements to be entered into in connection with such initial business combination.
The charter also provided that the compensation committee may, in its sole discretion, retain or obtain the advice of a compensation consultant, legal counsel or other advisor and will be directly responsible for the appointment, compensation and oversight of the work of any such advisor. However, before engaging or receiving advice from a compensation consultant, external legal counsel or any other advisor, the compensation committee will consider the independence of each such advisor, including the factors required by the NYSE and the SEC.
Compensation Committee Interlocks and Insider Participation
None of our officers currently serves, or in the past year has served, as a member of the board of directors or compensation committee of any entity that has one or more officers serving on our board of directors.
Code of Ethics
We have adopted a Code of Ethics applicable to our directors, officers and employees. A copy of the Code of Ethics will be provided without charge upon written request to our principal executive offices. We intend to disclose any amendments to or waivers of certain provisions of our Code of Ethics in a Current Report on Form 8-K.
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Conflicts of Interest
Each of our officers and directors presently has, and any of them in the future may have additional, fiduciary or contractual obligations to other entities pursuant to which such officer or director is or will be required to present business combination opportunities to such entity. Accordingly, in the future, if any of our officers or directors becomes aware of a business combination opportunity which is suitable for an entity to which he or she has then-current fiduciary or contractual obligations, he or she will honor his or her fiduciary or contractual obligations to present such opportunity to such entity. We do not believe, however, that any fiduciary duties or contractual obligations of our officers arising in the future would materially undermine our ability to complete our business combination.
Potential investors should also be aware of the following other potential conflicts of interest:
| ● | None of our officers or directors is required to commit his or her full time to our affairs and, accordingly, may have conflicts of interest in allocating his or her time among various business activities. |
| ● | In the course of their other business activities, our officers and directors may become aware of investment and business opportunities which may be appropriate for presentation to us as well as the other entities with which they are affiliated. Our management may have conflicts of interest in determining to which entity a particular business opportunity should be presented. |
| ● | Our initial stockholders have agreed (i) to waive their redemption rights with respect to any founder shares and public shares held by them in connection with the completion of our initial business combination and a stockholder vote to approve an amendment to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation (A) that would modify the substance or timing of our obligation to provide holders of shares of Class A common stock the right to have their shares redeemed in connection with our initial business combination or to redeem 100% of our public shares if we do not complete our initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering or (B) with respect to any other provision relating to the rights of holders of our Class A commons stock and (ii) to waive their rights to liquidating distributions from the trust account with respect to any founder shares they hold if we fail to consummate an initial business combination within 24 months from the closing of our initial public offering (although they will be entitled to liquidating distributions from the trust account with respect to any public shares they hold if we fail to complete our initial business combination within the prescribed time frame). If we do not complete our initial business combination within such applicable time period, the proceeds of the sale of the private placement warrants held in the trust account will be used to fund the redemption of our public shares, and the private placement warrants will expire worthless. With certain limited exceptions, the founder shares will not be transferable, assignable by our sponsor until the earlier of: (A) one year after the completion of our initial business combination; or (B) subsequent to our initial business combination, (x) if the closing price of our Class A common stock equals or exceeds $12.00 per share (as adjusted for stock splits, stock dividends, reorganizations, recapitalizations and the like) for any 20 trading days within any 30-trading day period commencing at least 150 days after our initial business combination, or (y) the date on which we complete a liquidation, merger, capital stock exchange, reorganization or other similar transaction that results in all of our stockholders having the right to exchange their shares of common stock for cash, securities or other property. With certain limited exceptions, the private placement warrants and the Class A common stock underlying such warrants, will not be transferable, assignable or saleable by our sponsor or its permitted transferees until 30 days after the completion of our initial business combination. Since our sponsor and officers and directors may directly or indirectly own common stock and warrants following our initial public offering, our officers and directors may have a conflict of interest in determining whether a particular target business is an appropriate business with which to effectuate our initial business combination. |
| ● | Our officers and directors may have a conflict of interest with respect to evaluating a particular business combination if the retention or resignation of any such officers and directors was included by a target business as a condition to any agreement with respect to our initial business combination. |
| ● | Our sponsor, officers or directors may have a conflict of interest with respect to evaluating a business combination and financing arrangements as we may obtain loans from our sponsor or an affiliate of our sponsor or any of our officers or directors to finance transaction costs in connection with an intended initial business combination. Up to $1,500,000 of such loans may be convertible into warrants at a price of $1.00 per warrant at the option of the lender. Such warrants would be identical to the private placement warrants, including as to exercise price, exercisability and exercise period. |
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The conflicts described above may not be resolved in our favor.
In general, officers and directors of a corporation incorporated under the laws of the State of Delaware are required to present business opportunities to a corporation if:
| ● | the corporation could financially undertake the opportunity; |
| ● | the opportunity is within the corporation’s line of business; and |
| ● | it would not be fair to our company and its stockholders for the opportunity not to be brought to the attention of the corporation. |
Accordingly, as a result of multiple business affiliations, our officers and directors may have similar legal obligations relating to presenting business opportunities meeting the above-listed criteria to multiple entities.
Below is a table summarizing the entities to which our executive officers and directors currently have fiduciary duties or contractual obligations:
Individual |
| Entity |
| Entity’s Business |
| Affiliation |
Philip Krim |
| Casper Sleep Inc. |
| E-Commerce of Mattress |
| Chief Executive Officer and Director |
Alan Sheriff |
| PNC Financial Services Group |
| Banking |
| Vice Chairman |
| Tailwind International Acquisition Corp. |
| Special Purpose Acquisition Company |
| Director | |
Matt Eby |
| Tengram Capital Partners |
| Private Equity Firm |
| Co-Founder and Managing Partner |
| Tailwind International Acquisition Corp. |
| Special Purpose Acquisition Company |
| Director | |
| El Cap Holdings |
| Fitness Company |
| Chairman | |
| Lime Crime |
| Beauty Products |
| Chairman | |
| Algenist |
| Beauty Products |
| Director | |
| Revive |
| Beauty Products |
| Director | |
| Cos Bar |
| Luxury Specialty Retail |
| Director | |
| Seawall Capital |
| Private Equity Firm |
| Founder and Managing Partner | |
| Kent Water Sports |
| Sporting Goods Company |
| Chairman | |
Chris Hollod |
| Hollod Holdings |
| Private Equity and Advisory |
| Founder and Managing Partner |
Wisdom Lu |
| Stibel Co and Bryant Stibel |
| Private Equity |
| Founding Partner |
| Fifth Wall Acquisition Corp. I |
| Special Purpose Acquisition Company |
| Director | |
Boris Revsin |
| Republic Capital |
| Private Equity and Advisory |
| Managing Director |
Will Quist |
| Slow Ventures Galleon Technologies, Inc. |
| Venture Capital Cloud-based supply chain management platform |
| Partner Director |
Accordingly, if any of the above executive officers or directors becomes aware of a business combination opportunity which is suitable for any of the above entities to which he or she has current fiduciary or contractual obligations, he or she will honor his or her fiduciary or contractual obligations to present such business combination opportunity to such entity, and only present it to us if such entity rejects the opportunity. We do not believe, however, that any of the foregoing fiduciary duties or contractual obligations will materially affect our ability to complete our business combination. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that we renounce our interest in any corporate opportunity offered to any director or officer unless such opportunity is expressly offered to such person solely in his or her capacity as a director or officer of our company and such opportunity is one we are legally and contractually permitted to undertake and would otherwise be reasonable for us to pursue.
We are not prohibited from pursuing an initial business combination with a company that is affiliated with our sponsor, officers or directors. In the event we seek to complete our initial business combination with such a company, we, or a committee of independent
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directors, would obtain an opinion from an independent investment banking firm or from an independent accounting firm, that such an initial business combination is fair to our company from a financial point of view.
As long as our sponsor is controlled by Philip Krim, we have agreed not to enter into a definitive agreement regarding an initial business combination without the prior consent of our sponsor. In the event that we submit our initial business combination to our public stockholders for a vote, our initial stockholders have agreed to vote any founder shares held by them and any public shares purchased during or after the offering in favor of our initial business combination and our officers and directors have also agreed to vote any public shares purchased during or after the offering in favor of our initial business combination.
Limitation on Liability and Indemnification of Officers and Directors
Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that our officers and directors will be indemnified by us to the fullest extent authorized by Delaware law, as it now exists or may in the future be amended. In addition, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation provides that our directors will not be personally liable for monetary damages to us or our stockholders for breaches of their fiduciary duty as directors, unless they violated their duty of loyalty to us or our stockholders, acted in bad faith, knowingly or intentionally violated the law, authorized unlawful payments of dividends, unlawful stock purchases or unlawful redemptions, or derived an improper personal benefit from their actions as directors.
We have entered into agreements with our officers and directors to provide contractual indemnification in addition to the indemnification provided for in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation. Our bylaws also will permit us to secure insurance on behalf of any officer, director or employee for any liability arising out of his or her actions, regardless of whether Delaware law would permit such indemnification. We have purchased a policy of directors’ and officers’ liability insurance that insures our officers and directors against the cost of defense, settlement or payment of a judgment in some circumstances and insures us against our obligations to indemnify our officers and directors.
These provisions may discourage stockholders from bringing a lawsuit against our directors for breach of their fiduciary duty. These provisions also may have the effect of reducing the likelihood of derivative litigation against officers and directors, even though such an action, if successful, might otherwise benefit us and our stockholders. Furthermore, a stockholder’s investment may be adversely affected to the extent we pay the costs of settlement and damage awards against officers and directors pursuant to these indemnification provisions.
We believe that these provisions, the insurance and the indemnity agreements are necessary to attract and retain talented and experienced officers and directors.
ITEM 11.EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION
The following disclosure concerns the compensation of our executive officers and directors for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 (i.e., pre-business combination).
None of our officers or directors received any cash compensation for services rendered to us. Since September 3, 2020, we have paid an affiliate of our sponsor a total of $10,000 per month for office space, utilities and secretarial and administrative support. Upon completion of our initial business combination or our liquidation, we will cease paying these monthly fees. No compensation of any kind, including finder’s and consulting fees, will be paid to our sponsor, officers and directors, or any of their respective affiliates, for services rendered prior to or in connection with the completion of our initial business combination. However, these individuals will be reimbursed for any out-of-pocket expenses incurred in connection with activities on our behalf such as identifying potential target businesses and performing due diligence on suitable business combinations. Our audit committee has and will continue to review on a quarterly basis all payments that were made by us to our sponsor, officers or directors, or our or their affiliates.
After the completion of our initial business combination, directors or members of our management team who remain with us may be paid consulting or management fees from the combined company. All of these fees will be fully disclosed to stockholders, to the extent then known, in the tender offer materials or proxy solicitation materials furnished to our stockholders in connection with a proposed business combination. We have not established any limit on the amount of such fees that may be paid by the combined company to our directors or members of management. It is unlikely the amount of such compensation will be known at the time of the proposed business combination, because the directors of the post-combination business will be responsible for determining officer and director
67
compensation. Any compensation to be paid to our officers will be determined, or recommended to the board of directors for determination, either by a compensation committee constituted solely by independent directors or by a majority of the independent directors on our board of directors.
We do not intend to take any action to ensure that members of our management team maintain their positions with us after the consummation of our initial business combination, although it is possible that some or all of our officers and directors may negotiate employment or consulting arrangements to remain with us after our initial business combination. The existence or terms of any such employment or consulting arrangements to retain their positions with us may influence our management’s motivation in identifying or selecting a target business but we do not believe that the ability of our management to remain with us after the consummation of our initial business combination will be a determining factor in our decision to proceed with any potential business combination. We are not party to any agreements with our officers and directors that provide for benefits upon termination of employment.
ITEM 12.SECURITY OWNERSHIP OF CERTAIN BENEFICIAL OWNERS AND MANAGEMENT AND RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS
The following table sets forth information regarding the beneficial ownership of our shares of common stock as of March 29, 2022, based on information obtained from the persons named below, with respect to the beneficial ownership of our shares of common stock, by:
| ● | each person known by us to be the beneficial owner of more than 5% of our outstanding shares of common stock; |
| ● | each of our executive officers and directors that beneficially owns our shares of common stock; and |
| ● | all our executive officers and directors as a group. |
Unless otherwise indicated, we believe that all persons named in the table have sole voting and investment power with respect to all shares of common stock beneficially owned by them. The following table does not reflect record or beneficial ownership of the private placement warrants.
| Class B common stock |
| Class A common stock |
| |||||
Number of | Number of |
| |||||||
Shares | Approximate | Shares | Approximate |
| |||||
Beneficially | Percentage of | Beneficially | Percentage of |
| |||||
Name of Beneficial Owners(1) |
| Owned(2) |
| Class |
| Owned(2) |
| Class |
|
Tailwind Sponsor LLC(3) (our sponsor) | 8,355,393 |
| 100.0 | % | — |
| — | ||
Philip Krim(3) | 8,355,393 |
| 100.0 | % | — |
| — | ||
Chris Hollod | — |
| — |
| — |
| — | ||
Matt Eby | — |
| — |
| — |
| — | ||
Alan Sheriff | — |
| — |
| — |
| — | ||
Wisdom Lu | — |
| — |
| — |
| — | ||
Boris Revsin | — |
| — |
| — |
| — | ||
Will Quist | — |
| — |
| — |
| — | ||
All officers and directors as a group (seven individuals) | 8,355,393 |
| 100 | % | — |
| — | ||
Polar Asset Management Partners Inc.(4) | — |
| — |
| 2,324,396 |
| 6.95 | % | |
Magnetar Financial LLC(5) | — |
| — |
| 1,937,916 |
| 5.8 | % | |
683 Capital Management, LLC(6) | — |
| — |
| 3,000,000 |
| 9.0 | % | |
* | Less than one percent. |
68
Our sponsor, officers and directors are deemed to be our “promoter” as such term is defined under the federal securities laws.
Changes in Control
None.
ITEM 13.CERTAIN RELATIONSHIPS AND RELATED TRANSACTIONS, AND DIRECTOR INDEPENDENCE
Administrative Support Agreement
Since September 3, 2020, we have paid an affiliate of the sponsor a total of $10,000 per month for office space, utilities and secretarial, and administrative support services. Upon completion of a business combination or our liquidation, we will cease paying these monthly fees. For fiscal 2021, we incurred $120,000 in fees for these services, of which such amount is included in accrued expenses in the accompanying balance sheet.
Related Party Loans
In order to finance transaction costs in connection with a business combination, the sponsor, an affiliate of the sponsor, or certain of our officers and directors or their affiliates may, but are not obligated to, loan us funds as may be required (“working capital loans”). If we complete a business combination, we would repay the working capital loans out of the proceeds of the trust account released to us. Otherwise, the working capital loans would be repaid only out of funds held outside the trust account. In the event that a business combination does not close, we may use a portion of proceeds held outside the trust account to repay the working capital loans but no proceeds held in the trust account would be used to repay the working capital loans. The working capital loans would either be repaid upon consummation of a business combination, without interest, or, at the lender’s discretion, up to $1,500,000 of such working capital loans may be convertible into warrants, at a price of $1.00 per warrant, of the post business combination entity. The warrants would be identical to the private placement warrants. As of December 31, 2021, no working capital loans were outstanding.
69
Related Party Policy
We have adopted a code of ethics requiring us to avoid, wherever possible, all conflicts of interests, except under guidelines or resolutions approved by our board of directors (or the appropriate committee of our board) or as disclosed in our public filings with the SEC. Under our code of ethics, conflict of interest situations include any financial transaction, arrangement or relationship (including any indebtedness or guarantee of indebtedness) involving the Company.
In addition, our audit committee, pursuant to a written charter that was adopted prior to the consummation of our initial public offering, is responsible for reviewing and approving related party transactions to the extent that we enter into such transactions. An affirmative vote of a majority of the members of the audit committee present at a meeting at which a quorum is present is required in order to approve a related party transaction. A majority of the members of the entire audit committee will constitute a quorum. Without a meeting, the unanimous written consent of all of the members of the audit committee is required to approve a related party transaction. We also require each of our directors and executive officers to complete a directors’ and officers’ questionnaire that elicits information about related party transactions.
These procedures are intended to determine whether any such related party transaction impairs the independence of a director or presents a conflict of interest on the part of a director, employee or officer.
Director Independence
NYSE listing standards require that a majority of our board of directors be independent. Our board of directors has determined that Alan Sheriff, Wisdom Lu, Will Quist and Boris Revsin are “independent directors” as defined in the NYSE listing standards. Our independent directors have regularly scheduled meetings at which only independent directors are present.
ITEM 14.PRINCIPAL ACCOUNTANT FEES AND SERVICES
The firm of WithumSmith+Brown, PC, or Withum, acts as our independent registered public accounting firm. The following is a summary of fees paid to Withum for services rendered.
Audit Fees. For the year ended December 31, 2021 and for the period from May 29, 2020 (inception) through December 31, 2020, fees for our independent registered public accounting firm were approximately $114,980 and $80,995, respectively, for the services Withum performed in connection with our Initial Public Offering, review of the financial information included in our Forms 10-Q and the audit of our December 31, 2021 and 2020 financial statements included in this Report on Form 10-K.
Audit-Related Fees. For the year ended December 31, 2021 and for the period from May 29, 2020 (inception) through December 31, 2020, our independent registered public accounting firm did not render assurance and related services related to the performance of the audit or review of financial statements.
Tax Fees. For the year ended December 31, 2021 and for the period from May 29, 2020 (inception) through December 31, 2020, our independent registered public accounting firm did not render services to us for tax compliance, tax advice and tax planning.
All Other Fees. For the year ended December 31, 2021 and for the period from May 29, 2020 (inception) through December 31, 2020, there were no fees billed for products and services provided by our independent registered public accounting firm other than those set forth above.
Pre-Approval Policy
Our audit committee was formed upon the consummation of our initial public offering. As a result, the audit committee did not pre-approve all of the foregoing services, although any services rendered prior to the formation of our audit committee were approved by our board of directors. Since the formation of our audit committee, and on a going-forward basis, the audit committee has and will pre-approve all auditing services and permitted non-audit services to be performed for us by our auditors, including the fees and terms thereof (subject to the de minimis exceptions for non-audit services described in the Exchange Act which are approved by the audit committee prior to the completion of the audit).
70
PART IV
ITEM 15.EXHIBITS, FINANCIAL STATEMENTS SCHEDULES
| (a) | The following documents are filed as part of this Report: |
| (1) | Financial Statements: |
| Page |
F-2 | |
F-3 | |
F-4 | |
F-5 | |
F-6 | |
F-7 |
| (2) | Financial Statement Schedules: |
None.
| (3) | Exhibits |
We hereby file as part of this Report the exhibits listed in the attached Exhibit Index. Exhibits which are incorporated herein by reference can be inspected and copied at the public reference facilities maintained by the SEC, 100 F Street, N.E., Room 1580, Washington, D.C. 20549. Copies of such material can also be obtained from the Public Reference Section of the SEC, 100 F Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20549, at prescribed rates or on the SEC website at www.sec.gov.
Exhibit |
| Description |
|---|---|---|
2.1† | ||
|
| |
3.1 | ||
|
| |
3.2 | ||
|
| |
4.1 | ||
|
| |
4.2 | ||
|
| |
4.3 | ||
4.4 | ||
|
| |
4.5 |
71
Exhibit |
| Description |
|---|---|---|
|
| |
10.1 | ||
|
| |
10.2 | ||
|
| |
10.3 | ||
|
| |
10.4 | ||
|
| |
10.5 | ||
10.6 | ||
31.1* | Certification of the Chief Executive Officer required by Rule 13a-14(a) or Rule 15d-14(a). | |
|
| |
31.2* | Certification of the Chief Financial Officer required by Rule 13a-14(a) or Rule 15d-14(a). | |
|
| |
32.1** | ||
|
| |
32.2** | ||
|
| |
101.INS* | XBRL Instance Document | |
|
| |
101.SCH* | XBRL Taxonomy Extension Schema | |
|
| |
101.CAL* | XBRL Taxonomy Extension Calculation Linkbase | |
|
| |
101.DEF* | XBRL Taxonomy Extension Definition Linkbase | |
|
| |
101.LAB* | XBRL Taxonomy Extension Label Linkbase | |
|
| |
101.PRE* | XBRL Taxonomy Extension Presentation Linkbase | |
104* | 104 Cover Page Interactive Data File (embedded within the Inline XBRL document). |
* | Filed herewith |
** | Furnished herewith |
72
† | Certain of the exhibits and schedules to these exhibits have been omitted in accordance with Regulation S-K Item 601(a)(5). The registrant agrees to furnish a copy of all omitted exhibits and schedules to the SEC upon its request. |
73
SIGNATURES
Pursuant to the requirements of Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this Annual Report on Form 10-K to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned, thereunto duly authorized.
March 31, 2022
TAILWIND ACQUISITION CORP. | ||||
| ||||
/s/ Chris Hollod | ||||
Name: | Chris Hollod | |||
Title: | Chief Executive Officer | |||
Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, this Annual Report on Form 10-K has been signed below by the following persons on behalf of the registrant and in the capacities and on the dates indicated.
Name |
| Position |
| Date |
|
|
| ||
/s/ Philip Krim | Chairman of the Board of Directors | March 31, 2022 | ||
Philip Krim |
|
| ||
/s/ Chris Hollod | Chief Executive Officer and Director | March 31, 2022 | ||
Chris Hollod | (Principal Executive Officer) |
| ||
/s/ Matt Eby | Chief Financial Officer and Director | March 31, 2022 | ||
Matt Eby | (Principal Financial and Accounting Officer) |
| ||
/s/ Alan Sheriff | Director | March 31, 2022 | ||
Alan Sheriff |
|
| ||
/s/ Wisdom Lu | Director | March 31, 2022 | ||
Wisdom Lu |
|
| ||
/s/ Boris Revsin | Director | March 31, 2022 | ||
Boris Revsin |
|
| ||
/s/ Will Quist | Director | March 31, 2022 | ||
Will Quist |
|
|
75
TAILWIND ACQUISITION CORP.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
F-2 | |
Consolidated Financial Statements: | |
F-3 | |
F-4 | |
F-5 | |
F-6 | |
F-7 to F-20 |
F-1
Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm
To the Stockholders and the Board of Directors of
Tailwind Acquisition Corp.
Opinion on the Financial Statements
We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of Tailwind Acquisition Corp. (the “Company”) as of December 31, 2021 and 2020, the related consolidated statements of operations, changes in stockholders’ equity and cash flows for the year ended December 31, 2021 and the period from May 29, 2020 (inception) through December 31, 2020, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the “consolidated financial statements”). In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company as of December 31, 2021 and 2020, and the results of its operations and its cash flows for the year ended December 31, 2021 and the period from May 29, 2020 (inception) through December 31, 2020, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.
Going Concern
The accompanying consolidated financial statements have been prepared assuming that the Company will continue as a going concern. As discussed in Note 1 to the consolidated financial statements, if the Company is unable to raise additional funds to alleviate liquidity needs and complete a business combination by September 9, 2022, then the Company will cease all operations except for the purpose of liquidating. The liquidity condition and date for mandatory liquidation and subsequent dissolution raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern. Management's plans in regard to these matters are also described in Note 1. The consolidated financial statements do not include any adjustments that might result from the outcome of this uncertainty.
Basis for Opinion
These consolidated financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company's consolidated financial statements based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (“PCAOB”) and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.
We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audits to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. The Company is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, an audit of its internal control over financial reporting. As part of our audits, we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Company's internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion.
Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.
/s/
We have served as the Company’s auditor since 2020.
March 31, 2022
PCAOB ID Number
F-2
TAILWIND ACQUISITION CORP.
CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS
December 31, | ||||||
| 2021 |
| 2020 | |||
ASSETS |
|
| ||||
Current Assets |
|
| ||||
Cash | $ | | $ | | ||
Prepaid expenses |
| | | |||
Total Current Assets |
| | | |||
|
| |||||
Cash and marketable securities held in Trust Account |
| | | |||
TOTAL ASSETS | $ | | $ | | ||
|
| |||||
LIABILITIES, CLASS A STOCK SUBJECT TO POSSIBLE REDEMPTION AND STOCKHOLDERS’ DEFICIT |
|
| ||||
Current liabilities |
|
| ||||
Accounts payable and accrued expenses | $ | | $ | | ||
Accrued offering costs |
| | | |||
Total Current Liabilities |
| | | |||
Warrant liabilities |
| | | |||
Deferred underwriting fee payable | | | ||||
Total Liabilities |
| | | |||
|
| |||||
Commitments and Contingencies |
|
| ||||
|
| |||||
Class A common stock subject to possible redemption; |
| |||||
|
| |||||
Stockholders’ Deficit |
|
| ||||
Preferred Stock, $ |
| |||||
Class B common stock, $ |
| | | |||
Accumulated deficit |
| ( | ( | |||
Total Stockholders’ Deficit |
| ( | ( | |||
TOTAL LIABILITIES, CLASS A STOCK SUBJECT TO POSSIBLE REDEMPTION AND STOCKHOLDERS’ DEFICIT | $ | | $ | | ||
The accompanying notes are an integral part of the consolidated financial statements.
F-3
TAILWIND ACQUISITION CORP.
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS
For the Period | ||||||
from May 29, | ||||||
2020 | ||||||
(inception) | ||||||
Year Ended | through | |||||
December 31, | December 31, | |||||
| 2021 |
| 2020 | |||
Formation and operational costs | $ | | $ | |||
Loss from operations |
| ( | ( | |||
|
| |||||
Other income (expense): |
|
| ||||
Interest earned on marketable securities held in Trust Account |
| | ||||
Transaction costs associated with the Initial Public Offering | — | ( | ||||
Change in fair value of warrant liabilities | | ( | ||||
Total other income (expense), net | | ( | ||||
Net income (loss) | $ | | $ | ( | ||
|
| |||||
Weighted average shares outstanding, Class A common stock |
| | | |||
Basic and diluted income (loss) per share, Class A common stock | $ | | $ | ( | ||
|
| |||||
Weighted average shares outstanding, Class B common stock |
| | | |||
Basic and diluted net income (loss) per share, Class B common stock | $ | | $ | ( | ||
The accompanying notes are an integral part of the consolidated financial statements.
F-4
TAILWIND ACQUISITION CORP.
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CHANGES IN STOCKHOLDERS’ DEFICIT
FOR THE PERIOD FROM MAY 29, 2020 (INCEPTION) THROUGH DECEMBER 31, 2020 AND FOR THE YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31,2021
| Class A | Class B | Additional | Total | |||||||||||||||
Common Stock | Common Stock | Paid-in | Accumulated | Stockholders’ | |||||||||||||||
|
| Shares |
| Amount |
| Shares |
| Amount |
| Capital |
| Deficit |
| Deficit | |||||
Balance – May 29, 2020 (Inception) | | $ | | | $ | | $ | | $ | | $ | | |||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||
Issuance of Class B common stock to Sponsor |
| — |
| — |
| |
| |
| |
| — |
| | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||
Cash proceeds received in excess of fair value of Private Placement Warrants |
| — |
| — |
| — |
| — |
| |
| — |
| | |||||
Accretion to Common Stock subject to redemption value | — | — | — | — | ( | ( | ( | ||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||
Forfeiture of Founder Shares |
| — |
| — |
| ( |
| ( |
| — |
| |
| — | |||||
Net loss |
| — |
| — |
| — |
| — |
| — |
| ( |
| ( | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||
Balance – December 31, 2020 |
| — | — |
| | | — | ( | ( | ||||||||||
Net income | — | — | — | — | — | | | ||||||||||||
Balance – December 31, 2021 | — | $ | — | | $ | $ | — | $ | ( | $ | ( | ||||||||
The accompanying notes are an integral part of the consolidated financial statements.
F-5
TAILWIND ACQUISITION CORP.
CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS
For the Period | ||||||
from May 29, | ||||||
2020 (inception) | ||||||
Year Ended | through | |||||
December 31, | December 31, | |||||
| 2021 | 2020 | ||||
Cash Flows from Operating Activities: |
| |||||
Net income (loss) | $ | | $ | ( | ||
Adjustments to reconcile net income (loss) to net cash used in operating activities: |
|
| ||||
Change in fair value of warrant liabilities |
| ( | ||||
Transaction costs associated with the Initial Public Offering | — | |||||
Interest earned on marketable securities held in Trust Account | ( | ( | ||||
Changes in operating assets and liabilities: |
|
| ||||
Prepaid expenses |
| | ( | |||
Accounts payable and accrued expenses |
| | ||||
Net cash used in operating activities |
| ( | ( | |||
|
| |||||
Cash Flows from Investing Activities: |
|
| ||||
Investment of cash into Trust Account |
| — | ( | |||
Net cash used in investing activities |
| — | ( | |||
|
| |||||
Cash Flows from Financing Activities: |
|
| ||||
Proceeds from issuance of Class B common stock to Sponsor |
| — | ||||
Proceeds from sale of Units, net of underwriting discounts paid |
| — | ||||
Proceeds from sale of Private Placement Warrants |
| — | ||||
Repayment of promissory note – related party |
| — | ( | |||
Payment of offering costs |
| ( | ( | |||
Net cash (used in) provided by financing activities |
| ( | ||||
|
| |||||
Net Change in Cash |
| |||||
Cash – Beginning |
| | | |||
Cash – Ending | $ | | $ | |||
|
| |||||
Non-cash investing and financing activities: |
|
| ||||
Accretion to Class A common stock subject to redemption value | $ | — | $ | |||
Offering costs included in accrued offering costs | $ | — | $ | |||
Offering costs paid through promissory note | $ | — | $ | |||
Deferred underwriting fee payable | $ | — | $ | |||
The accompanying notes are an integral part of the consolidated financial statements.
F-6
NOTE 1. DESCRIPTION OF ORGANIZATION AND BUSINESS OPERATIONS
Tailwind Acquisition Corp. (the “Company”) was incorporated in Delaware on May 29, 2020. The Company was formed for the purpose of entering into a merger, capital stock exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses (the “Business Combination”).
The Company has one subsidiary, Compass Merger Sub Inc., a direct, wholly owned subsidiary of the Company incorporated in Delaware on February 17, 2021 (“Merger Sub”) (see Note 6).
The Company is not limited to a particular industry or sector for purposes of consummating a Business Combination. The Company is an early stage and emerging growth company and, as such, the Company is subject to all of the risks associated with early stage and emerging growth companies.
As of December 31, 2021, the Company had not commenced any operations. All activity for the period from May 29, 2020 (inception) through December 31, 2021 relates to the Company’s formation, the initial public offering (“Initial Public Offering”), which is described below, and identifying a target company for a Business Combination. The Company will not generate any operating revenues until after the completion of a Business Combination, at the earliest. The Company generates non-operating income in the form of interest income on the marketable securities held in the Trust Account (as defined below).
The registration statement for the Company’s Initial Public Offering was declared effective on September 3, 2020. On September 9, 2020 the Company consummated the Initial Public Offering of
Simultaneously with the closing of the Initial Public Offering, the Company consummated the sale of
Transaction costs amounted to $
Following the closing of the Initial Public Offering on September 9, 2020, an amount of $
The Company’s management has broad discretion with respect to the specific application of the net proceeds of the Initial Public Offering and the sale of the Private Placement Warrants, although substantially all of the net proceeds are intended to be applied generally toward consummating a Business Combination. There is no assurance that the Company will be able to complete a Business Combination successfully. The Company must complete a Business Combination with one or more operating businesses or assets that together have an aggregate fair market value equal to at least
The Company will provide its holders of the outstanding Public Shares (the “public stockholders”) with the opportunity to redeem all or a portion of their Public Shares upon the completion of a Business Combination either (i) in connection with a stockholder meeting called to approve the Business Combination or (ii) by means of a tender offer. The decision as to whether the Company will seek stockholder approval of a Business Combination or conduct a tender offer will be made by the Company. The public stockholders will
F-7
be entitled to redeem their Public Shares for a pro rata portion of the amount then in the Trust Account (initially anticipated to be $
The Company will only proceed with a Business Combination if the Company has net tangible assets of at least $
Notwithstanding the above, if the Company seeks stockholder approval of a Business Combination and it does not conduct redemptions pursuant to the tender offer rules, the Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation provides that a public stockholder, together with any affiliate of such stockholder or any other person with whom such stockholder is acting in concert or as a “group” (as defined under Section 13 of the Exchange Act), will be restricted from redeeming its shares with respect to more than an aggregate of
The Sponsor has agreed (a) to waive its redemption rights with respect to its Founder Shares and Public Shares held by it in connection with the completion of a Business Combination and (b) not to propose an amendment to the Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation (i) to modify the substance or timing of the Company’s obligation to allow redemption in connection with the Company’s initial Business Combination or to redeem 100% of its Public Shares if the Company does not complete a Business Combination or (ii) with respect to any other provision relating to stockholders’ rights or pre-initial business combination activity, unless the Company provides the public stockholders with the opportunity to redeem their Public Shares in conjunction with any such amendment.
The Company will have until September 9, 2022 to complete a Business Combination (the “Combination Period”). If the Company is unable to complete a Business Combination within the Combination Period, the Company will (i) cease all operations except for the purpose of winding up, (ii) as promptly as reasonably possible but not more than business days thereafter, redeem the Public Shares, at a per-share price, payable in cash, equal to the aggregate amount then on deposit in the Trust Account including interest earned on the funds held in the Trust Account and not previously released to the Company to pay its tax obligations (less up to $
The Sponsor has agreed to waive its liquidation rights with respect to the Founder Shares if the Company fails to complete a Business Combination within the Combination Period. However, if the Sponsor acquires Public Shares in or after the Initial Public Offering, such Public Shares will be entitled to liquidating distributions from the Trust Account if the Company fails to complete a Business Combination within the Combination Period. The underwriter has agreed to waive its rights to the deferred underwriting commission (see Note 6) held in the Trust Account in the event the Company does not complete a Business Combination within the Combination Period and, in such event, such amounts will be included with the other funds held in the Trust Account that will be available to fund the redemption of the Public Shares. In the event of such distribution, it is possible that the per share value of the assets remaining available for distribution will be less than the Initial Public Offering price per Unit ($
F-8
In order to protect the amounts held in the Trust Account, the Sponsor has agreed to be liable to the Company if and to the extent any claims by a third party for services rendered or products sold to the Company, or a prospective target business with which the Company has discussed entering into a transaction agreement, reduce the amount of funds in the Trust Account to below (1) $
Going Concern and Liquidity
As of December 31, 2021, the Company has $
Until the consummation of a Business Combination, the Company will be using the funds not held in the Trust Account for identifying and evaluating prospective acquisition candidates, performing due diligence on prospective target businesses, paying for travel expenditures, selecting the target business to acquire, and structuring, negotiating and consummating the Business Combination.
The Company will need to raise additional capital through loans or additional investments from its Sponsor, stockholders, officers, directors, or third parties. The Company’s officers, directors and Sponsor may, but are not obligated to, loan the Company funds, from time to time or at any time, in whatever amount they deem reasonable in their sole discretion, to meet the Company’s working capital needs. Accordingly, the Company may not be able to obtain additional financing. If the Company is unable to raise additional capital, it may be required to take additional measures to conserve liquidity, which could include, but not necessarily be limited to, suspending the pursuit of a Business Combination. The Company cannot provide any assurance that new financing will be available to it on commercially acceptable terms, if at all.
As a result of the above, in connection with the Company’s assessment of going concern considerations in accordance with FASB’s Accounting Standards Update (“ASU”) 2014-15, “Disclosures of Uncertainties about an Entity’s Ability to Continue as a Going Concern,” management determined that the liquidity condition and date for mandatory liquidation and dissolution raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern through September 9, 2022, the scheduled liquidation date of the Company if it does not complete a Business Combination prior to such date. Management may raise additional capital through loans or additional investments from its Sponsor, stockholders, officers, directors, or third parties to meet the Company’s working capital needs and to complete the proposed Business Combination before the mandatory liquidation date. The Company may not be able to obtain additional financing. The Company cannot provide any assurance that new financing will be available to it on commercially acceptable terms, if at all. The Company intends to complete a Business Combination before the mandatory liquidation date. However, there can be no assurance that the Company will be able to consummate any Business Combination by September 9, 2022. These consolidated financial statements do not include any adjustments relating to the recovery of the recorded assets or the classification of the liabilities that might be necessary should the Company be unable to continue as a going concern.
NOTE 2. SUMMARY OF SIGNIFICANT ACCOUNTING POLICIES
Basis of Presentation
The accompanying consolidated financial statements are presented in U.S. dollars and have been prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“U.S. GAAP”) and pursuant to the accounting and disclosure rules and regulations of the SEC.
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Principles of Consolidation
The accompanying consolidated financial statements include the accounts of the Company and its wholly-owned subsidiary. All significant intercompany balances and transactions have been eliminated in consolidation.
Emerging Growth Company
The Company is an “emerging growth company,” as defined in Section 2(a) of the Securities Act, as modified by the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 (the “JOBS Act”), and it may take advantage of certain exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not emerging growth companies including, but not limited to, not being required to comply with the independent registered public accounting firm attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in its periodic reports and proxy statements, and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved.
Further, Section 102(b)(1) of the JOBS Act exempts emerging growth companies from being required to comply with new or revised financial accounting standards until private companies (that is, those that have not had a Securities Act registration statement declared effective or do not have a class of securities registered under the Exchange Act) are required to comply with the new or revised financial accounting standards. The JOBS Act provides that a company can elect to opt out of the extended transition period and comply with the requirements that apply to non-emerging growth companies but any such election to opt out is irrevocable. The Company has elected not to opt out of such extended transition period which means that when a standard is issued or revised and it has different application dates for public or private companies, the Company, as an emerging growth company, can adopt the new or revised standard at the time private companies adopt the new or revised standard. This may make comparison of the Company’s financial statements with another public company which is neither an emerging growth company nor an emerging growth company which has opted out of using the extended transition period difficult or impossible because of the potential differences in accounting standards used.
Use of Estimates
The preparation of consolidated financial statements in conformity with U.S. GAAP requires the Company’s management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the consolidated financial statements and the reported amounts of revenues and expenses during the reporting periods.
Making estimates requires management to exercise significant judgment. It is at least reasonably possible that the estimate of the effect of a condition, situation or set of circumstances that existed at the date of the consolidated financial statements, which management considered in formulating its estimate, could change in the near term due to one or more future confirming events. One of the more significant accounting estimates included in these financial statements is the determination of the fair value of the warrant liabilities. Such estimates may be subject to change as more current information becomes available and accordingly the actual results could differ significantly from those estimates. Accordingly, the actual results could differ significantly from those estimates.
Cash and Cash Equivalents
The Company considers all short-term investments with an original maturity of three months or less when purchased to be cash equivalents. The Company did
Marketable Securities Held in Trust Account
The Company classifies its U.S. Treasury and equivalent securities as held-to-maturity in accordance with ASC 320 “Investments - Debt and Equity Securities.” Held-to-maturity securities are those securities which the Company has the ability and intent to hold until maturity. Held-to-maturity treasury securities are recorded at amortized cost on the accompanying consolidated balance sheets and adjusted for the amortization or accretion of premiums or discounts.
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Class A Common Stock Subject to Possible Redemption
The Company accounts for its Class A common stock subject to possible redemption in accordance with the guidance in Accounting Standards Codification (“ASC”) Topic 480 “Distinguishing Liabilities from Equity.” Class A common stock subject to mandatory redemption is classified as a liability instrument and is measured at fair value. Conditionally redeemable common stock (including common stock that features redemption rights that is either within the control of the holder or subject to redemption upon the occurrence of uncertain events not solely within the Company’s control) is classified as temporary equity. At all other times, common stock is classified as stockholders’ equity. The Company’s Class A common stock features certain redemption rights that are considered to be outside of the Company’s control and subject to occurrence of uncertain future events. Accordingly, the
The Company recognizes changes in redemption value immediately as they occur and adjusts the carrying value of redeemable Class A common stock to equal the redemption value at the end of each reporting period. Increases or decreases in the carrying amount of redeemable common stock are affected by charges against additional paid in capital and accumulated deficit.
At December 31, 2021 and 2020, the Class A Common Stock reflected in the consolidated balance sheets are reconciled in the following table:
Gross proceeds |
| $ | |
Less: |
|
| |
Proceeds allocated to Public Warrants | ( | ||
Class A Common stocks issuance costs | ( | ||
Plus: |
|
| |
Accretion of carrying value to redemption value | | ||
Class A Common stocks subject to possible redemption | $ | |
Offering Costs
Offering costs consist of legal, accounting and other expenses that are directly related to the Initial Public Offering. Offering costs were allocated to the separable financial instruments issued in the Initial Public Offering based on a relative fair value basis, compared to total proceeds received. Offering costs amounted to $
Warrant Liabilities
The Company accounts for the Warrants in accordance with the guidance contained in ASC 815-40 under which the Warrants do not meet the criteria for equity treatment and must be recorded as liabilities. Accordingly, the Company classifies the Warrants as liabilities at their fair value and adjust the Warrants to fair value at each reporting period. These liabilities are subject to re-measurement at each balance sheet date until exercised, and any change in fair value is recognized in the statements of operations. The Private Warrants and the Public Warrants for periods where no observable traded price was available are valued using a binomial lattice model. For periods subsequent to the detachment of the Public Warrants from the Units, the Public Warrant quoted market price was used as the fair value for both the Public Warrants and Private Warrants as of each reporting date.
Income Taxes
The Company follows the asset and liability method of accounting for income taxes under ASC 740, “Income Taxes.” Deferred tax assets and liabilities are recognized for the estimated future tax consequences attributable to differences between the financial statements carrying amounts of existing assets and liabilities and their respective tax bases. Deferred tax assets and liabilities are measured using enacted tax rates expected to apply to taxable income in the years in which those temporary differences are expected to be recovered or settled. The effect on deferred tax assets and liabilities of a change in tax rates is recognized in income in the period that included the enactment date. Valuation allowances are established, when necessary, to reduce deferred tax assets to the amount expected to be
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realized. As of December 31, 2021 and December 31, 2020, the Company had a deferred tax asset of approximately and , respectively, which had a full valuation allowance recorded against it.
The Company’s current taxable income primarily consists of interest income on the Trust Account. The Company’s general and administrative costs are generally considered start-up costs and are not currently deductible. During the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020, the Company did
ASC 740 prescribes a recognition threshold and a measurement attribute for the financial statement recognition and measurement of tax positions taken or expected to be taken in a tax return. For those benefits to be recognized, a tax position must be more likely than not to be sustained upon examination by taxing authorities. The Company recognizes accrued interest and penalties related to unrecognized tax benefits as income tax expense. There were
Net Income (Loss) Per Common Share
The Company complies with accounting and disclosure requirements of FASB ASC Topic 260, “Earnings Per Share”. The Company has
The calculation of diluted income (loss) per share does not consider the effect of the warrants issued in connection with the (i) Initial Public Offering and (ii) private placement, since the exercise of the warrants is contingent upon the occurrence of future events. The warrants are exercisable to purchase
The following table reflects the calculation of basic and diluted net income (loss) per common share (in dollars, except per share amounts):
For the Period from May | ||||||||||||
29,2020 (inception) | ||||||||||||
through | ||||||||||||
Year Ended December 31, | December 31, | |||||||||||
2021 | 2020 | |||||||||||
| Class A |
| Class B |
| Class A |
| Class B | |||||
Basic and diluted net income (loss) per common stock | ||||||||||||
Numerator: | ||||||||||||
Allocation of net income (loss) | $ | | $ | | $ | ( | $ | ( | ||||
Denominator: | ||||||||||||
Basic and diluted weighted average shares outstanding | | | | | ||||||||
Basic and diluted net income (loss) per common stock | | ( | ( | |||||||||
For the year ended December 31, 2021 and for the period from May 29, 2020 (inception) through December 31, 2020, basic and diluted shares are the same as there are no securities that are dilutive to the stockholders.
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Concentration of Credit Risk
Financial instruments that potentially subject the Company to concentrations of credit risk consist of a cash account in a financial institution, which, at times, may exceed the Federal Depository Insurance Coverage limit of $
Fair Value of Financial Instruments
The fair value of the Company’s assets and liabilities, which qualify as financial instruments under ASC 820, “Fair Value Measurement,” approximates the carrying amounts represented in the accompanying consolidated balance sheets, primarily due to their short-term nature other than warrant liabilities.
Recent Accounting Standards
In August 2020, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) issued Accounting Standards Update (“ASU”) 2020-06, Debt — Debt with Conversion and Other Options (Subtopic 470-20) and Derivatives and Hedging — Contracts in Entity’s Own Equity (Subtopic 815-40) (“ASU 2020-06”) to simplify accounting for certain financial instruments. ASU 2020-06 eliminates the current models that require separation of beneficial conversion and cash conversion features from convertible instruments and simplifies the derivative scope exception guidance pertaining to equity classification of contracts in an entity’s own equity. The new standard also introduces additional disclosures for convertible debt and freestanding instruments that are indexed to and settled in an entity’s own equity. ASU 2020-06 amends the diluted earnings per share guidance, including the requirement to use the if-converted method for all convertible instruments. ASU 2020-06 is effective January 1, 2022 and should be applied on a full or modified retrospective basis, with early adoption permitted beginning on January 1, 2021. The Company adopted ASU 2020-06 effective January 1, 2021. The adoption of ASU 2020-06 did not have an impact on the Company’s consolidated financial statements.
Management does not believe that any recently issued, but not yet effective, accounting standards, if currently adopted, would have a material effect on the Company’s consolidated financial statements.
NOTE 3. INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING
Pursuant to the Initial Public Offering, the Company sold
NOTE 4. PRIVATE PLACEMENT
Simultaneously with the closing of the Initial Public Offering, the Sponsor purchased an aggregate of
NOTE 5. RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS
Founder Shares
In June 2020, the Sponsor purchased
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Offering. The underwriter’s over-allotment option expired unexercised on October 24, 2020, as such
The Sponsor has agreed, subject to certain limited exceptions, not to transfer, assign or sell any of the Founder Shares until the earlier of (A)
Administrative Support Agreement
The Company entered into an agreement, commencing on September 9, 2020, to pay an affiliate of the Sponsor a total of $
Promissory Note — Related Party
In June 2020, the Sponsor issued an unsecured promissory note to the Company (the “Promissory Note”), pursuant to which the Company could borrow up to an aggregate principal amount of $
Related Party Loans
In addition, in order to finance transaction costs in connection with a Business Combination, the Sponsor, an affiliate of the Sponsor, or certain of the Company’s officers and directors or their affiliates may, but are not obligated to, loan the Company funds as may be required (“Working Capital Loans”). If the Company completes a Business Combination, the Company would repay the Working Capital Loans out of the proceeds of the Trust Account released to the Company. Otherwise, the Working Capital Loans would be repaid only out of funds held outside the Trust Account. In the event that a Business Combination does not close, the Company may use a portion of proceeds held outside the Trust Account to repay the Working Capital Loans but no proceeds held in the Trust Account would be used to repay the Working Capital Loans. The Working Capital Loans would either be repaid upon consummation of a Business Combination, without interest, or, at the lender’s discretion, up to $
NOTE 6. COMMITMENTS AND CONTINGENCIES
Risks and Uncertainties
Management continues to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and has concluded that while it is reasonably possible that the virus could have a negative effect on the Company’s financial position, results of its operations and/or ability to successfully complete a business combination, the specific impact is not readily determinable as of the date of these consolidated financial statements. The consolidated financial statements do not include any adjustments that might result from the outcome of this uncertainty.
Registration and Stockholder Rights
Pursuant to a registration and stockholder rights agreement entered into on September 9, 2020, the holders of the Founder Shares, Private Placement Warrants, and warrants that may be issued upon conversion of Working Capital Loans (and any shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of the Private Placement Warrants and warrants that may be issued upon conversion of the Working Capital Loans and upon conversion of the Founder Shares) are entitled to registration rights, requiring the Company to register such
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securities for resale (in the case of the Founder Shares, only after conversion to shares of Class A common stock). The holders of these securities will be entitled to make up to three demands, excluding short form demands, that the Company register such securities. In addition, the holders will have certain “piggy-back” registration rights with respect to registration statements filed subsequent to the completion of a Business Combination and rights to require the Company to register for resale such securities pursuant to Rule 415 under the Securities Act. However, the registration and stockholder rights agreement provides that the Company will not permit any registration statement filed under the Securities Act to become effective until termination of the applicable lock-up period. The Company will bear the expenses incurred in connection with the filing of any such registration statements.
Underwriting Agreement
The Company granted the underwriter a
The underwriter is entitled to a deferred fee of $
Termination of Proposed QOMPLX Business Combination
On March 1, 2021, the Company entered into a Business Combination Agreement (the “Business Combination Agreement”), by and among the Company, Merger Sub, QOMPLX, Inc. (“QOMPLX”) and Rationem, LLC a Delaware limited liability company, in its capacity as the representative of the stockholders of QOMPLX (the “QOMPLX Stockholder Representative”) (such transactions, the “QOMPLX Business Combination”). On August 17, 2021, the Company and QOMPLX entered into a Termination Agreement, pursuant to which they terminated the Business Combination Agreement in a mutual decision not to pursue the QOMPLX Business Combination. On August 23, 2021, the Company withdrew the registration statement on Form S-4 initially filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 25, 2021 (the “Registration Statement”).
NOTE 7. STOCKHOLDERS’ DEFICIT
Preferred Stock — The Company is authorized to issue
Class A Common Stock — The Company is authorized to issue
Class B Common Stock — The Company is authorized to issue
Holders of Class A common stock and Class B common stock will vote together as a single class on all matters submitted to a vote of stockholders except as required by law.
The shares of Class B common stock will automatically convert into shares of Class A common stock at the time of a Business Combination on a one-for-
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linked securities issued or deemed issued in connection with a Business Combination (excluding any shares or equity-linked securities issued, or to be issued, to any seller in a Business Combination).
NOTE 8. WARRANTS
As of December 31, 2021, there were
Public Warrants may only be exercised for a whole number of shares. No fractional warrants will be issued upon separation of the Units and only whole warrants will trade. The Public Warrants will become exercisable on the later of (a)
The Company will not be obligated to deliver any shares of Class A common stock pursuant to the exercise of a warrant and will have no obligation to settle such warrant exercise unless a registration statement under the Securities Act with respect to the shares of Class A common stock underlying the warrants is then effective and a prospectus relating thereto is current, subject to the Company satisfying its obligations with respect to registration, or a valid exemption from registration is available. No warrant will be exercisable and the Company will not be obligated to issue any shares of Class A common stock upon exercise of a warrant unless the share of Class A common stock issuable upon such warrant exercise has been registered, qualified or deemed to be exempt under the securities laws of the state of residence of the registered holder of the warrants.
The Company has agreed that as soon as practicable, but in no event later than
Redemptions of warrants when the price of Class A common stock equals or exceeds $
| ● | in whole and not in part; |
| ● | At a price of $ |
| ● | upon not less than |
| ● | if, and only if, the closing price of the Class A common stock equals or exceeds $ |
If and when the Public Warrants become redeemable by the Company, it may exercise its redemption right even if the Company is unable to register or qualify the underlying securities for sale under all applicable state securities laws.
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Redemption of warrants when the price per share of Class common stock equals or exceeds $
| ● | in whole and not in part; |
| ● | at $ |
| ● | if, and only if, the last reported sale price of the Class A common stock equals or exceeds $ |
| ● | if the closing price of the Class A common stock for any |
In addition, if (x) the Company issues additional shares of Class A common stock or equity-linked securities for capital raising purposes in connection with the closing of a Business Combination at an issue price or effective issue price of less than $
The Private Placement Warrants are identical to the Public Warrants underlying the Units sold in the Initial Public Offering, except that the Private Placement Warrants and the shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of the Private Placement Warrants will not be transferable, assignable or saleable until
The Company’s net deferred tax assets are as follows:
December 31, | ||||||
| 2021 | 2020 | ||||
Deferred tax assets |
|
| ||||
Net operating loss carryforward | $ | | $ | | ||
Organizational costs/Startup expenses |
| | | |||
Total deferred tax assets |
| | | |||
Valuation allowance |
| ( | ( | |||
Deferred tax assets, net of allowance | $ | — | $ | — | ||
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The income tax provision consists of the following:
Years Ended December 31, | ||||||
| 2021 |
| 2020 | |||
Federal |
|
| ||||
Deferred | $ | ( | $ | ( | ||
|
| |||||
Change in valuation allowance | |
| | |||
Income tax provision | $ | — | $ | — | ||
As of December 31, 2021 and 2020, the Company had $
In assessing the realization of the deferred tax assets, management considers whether it is more likely than not that some portion of all of the deferred tax assets will not be realized. The ultimate realization of deferred tax assets is dependent upon the generation of future taxable income during the periods in which temporary differences representing net future deductible amounts become deductible. Management considers the scheduled reversal of deferred tax liabilities, projected future taxable income and tax planning strategies in making this assessment. After consideration of all of the information available, management believes that significant uncertainty exists with respect to future realization of the deferred tax assets and has therefore established a full valuation allowance. For the year ended December 31, 2021 and for the period from May 29, 2020 (inception) through December 31, 2020, the change in the valuation allowance was $
A reconciliation of the federal income tax rate to the Company’s effective tax rate at December 31, 2021 and 2020 is as follows:
December 31, | |||||
| 2021 |
| 2020 | ||
Statutory federal income tax rate |
| | % | | % |
State taxes, net of federal tax benefit |
| | % | | % |
Change in fair value of warrant liabilities | ( | % | ( | % | |
Transaction costs associated with the Initial Public Offering | | % | ( | % | |
Change in valuation allowance |
| | % | ( | % |
Income tax provision |
| | % | % | |
The Company files income tax returns in the U.S. federal jurisdiction in various state and local jurisdictions and is subject to examination by the various taxing authorities.
NOTE 9. FAIR VALUE MEASUREMENTS
The fair value of the Company’s financial assets and liabilities reflects management’s estimate of amounts that the Company would have received in connection with the sale of the assets or paid in connection with the transfer of the liabilities in an orderly transaction between market participants at the measurement date. In connection with measuring the fair value of its assets and liabilities, the Company seeks to maximize the use of observable inputs (market data obtained from independent sources) and to minimize the use of unobservable inputs (internal assumptions about how market participants would price assets and liabilities). The following fair value hierarchy is used to classify assets and liabilities based on the observable inputs and unobservable inputs used in order to value the assets and liabilities:
Level 1:Quoted prices in active markets for identical assets or liabilities. An active market for an asset or liability is a market in which transactions for the asset or liability occur with sufficient frequency and volume to provide pricing information on an ongoing basis.
Level 2:Observable inputs other than Level 1 inputs. Examples of Level 2 inputs include quoted prices in active markets for similar assets or liabilities and quoted prices for identical assets or liabilities in markets that are not active.
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Level 3:Unobservable inputs based on our assessment of the assumptions that market participants would use in pricing the asset or liability.
At December 31, 2021, assets held in the Trust Account were comprised of $
The gross holding gains (losses) and fair value of held-to-maturity securities at December 31, 2021 and 2020 are as follows:
| Gross | ||||||||||
Amortized | Holding | ||||||||||
| Held-To-Maturity |
| Cost |
| Gain (Loss) |
| Fair Value | ||||
December 31, 2021 |
| Treasury Preferred Fund | $ | | $ | | $ | | |||
December 31, 2020 | U.S. Treasury Securities (Matured on 05/04/2021)1 | $ | $ | ( | $ | | |||||
(1) | Upon maturity, the proceeds in the Trust Account were invested in a Treasury Preferred Fund. |
The following table presents information about the Company’s assets and liabilities that are measured at fair value on a recurring basis at December 31, 2021 and 2020 indicates the fair value hierarchy of the valuation inputs the Company utilized to determine such fair value.
December 31, | December 31, | |||||||
| Level |
| 2021 |
| 2020 | |||
Assets: |
|
|
|
| ||||
Cash and marketable securities held in Trust Account |
| 1 | $ | | $ | |||
Liabilities: |
|
|
|
| ||||
Warrant liabilities – Public Warrants |
| 1 | $ | | $ | | ||
Warrant liabilities – Private Placement Warrants |
| 2 | $ | | $ | | ||
The Warrants were initially valued using a binomial lattice model. The binomial lattice model’s primary unobservable input utilized in determining the fair value of the Warrants is the expected volatility of the common stock. The expected volatility as of the Initial Public Offering date was derived from observable public warrant pricing on comparable ‘blank-check’ companies without an identified target. For periods subsequent to the detachment of the Public Warrants from the Units, the close price of the Public Warrant price was used as the fair value as of each relevant date. The subsequent measurements of the Public Warrants after the detachment of the Public Warrants from the Units are classified as Level 1 due to the use of an observable market quote in an active market. The subsequent measurements of the Private Placement Warrants after the detachment of the Public Warrants from the Units are classified as Level 2 due to the use of an observable market quote for a similar asset in an active market.
The following table presents the changes in the fair value of Level 3 warrant liabilities:
| Private | ||
Placement | |||
Fair value as of January 1, 2021 | $ | | |
Change in fair value |
| ( | |
Transfers out of Level 3 to Level 2 |
| ( | |
Fair value as of December 31, 2021 | $ | — | |
There were transfers out of Level 3 into Level 2 in the fair value hierarchy of $
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NOTE 10. SUBSEQUENT EVENTS
The Company evaluated subsequent events and transactions that occurred after the balance sheet date up to March 31, 2022, the date that the consolidated financial statements were issued. Based upon this review, the Company did not identify any subsequent events that would have required adjustment or disclosure in the consolidated financial statements.
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