During our Workshops we discuss a lot of detailed information, some of which does not come up often in practice. With this in mind, we thought we would start a series of blog posts about some of these “trivia” topics.
The first trivia question is “What is Form 10 all about?”
Turns out Form 10 is a behind the scenes issue in a current news story. On November 1, 2015, HP officially completed the process of splitting itself up into two separate companies:
HP, Inc. (ticker HPQ) which has the legacy HP PC and printer businesses. This company describes itself with these words:
“Our vision is to create technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere — every person, every organization, and every community around the globe. This motivates us — inspires us — to do what we do. To make what we make. To invent, and to reinvent. To engineer experiences that amaze. We won’t stop pushing ahead, because you won’t stop pushing ahead. You’re reinventing how you work. How you play. How you live. With our technology, you’ll reinvent your world.” (From www.hp.com)
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (ticker HPE) which has the HP services and corporate hardware businesses uses these words:
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is an industry leading technology company that enables customers to go further, faster. With the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio, spanning the cloud to the data center to workplace applications, Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s technology and services help customers around the world make IT more efficient, more productive and more secure. (From www.hpe.com)
Behind this split is a myriad of fascinating business reasons, which will doubtless become business school cases in the future. What is fun about the transaction for SEC geeks is how it was accomplished in the public company reporting world. HPE was separated out from HP, essentially a “spin-off” transaction. There were a lot of legal steps in the process, but in essence there was no public offering of HPE stock, it was distributed to the existing HP shareholders.
After the spin-off both companies wanted to trade on the NYSE. For HP Inc. this was easy; this is the corporate entity that was already listed, so no big deal. But what about the newly created HPE?
There is no transaction here to register under the 1933 Act, as stock is not being offered or sold to the public; it is being directly distributed to the existing HP shareholders. So there is no S-1 or S-3 or S-4 to file.
This is where the Form 10 comes in. It is a company’s first, and probably only, 1934 Act registration statement, and is the way a company “registers” under the 1934 Act when it trips over the size tests in the 1934 Act, which HPE did when it distributed stock to more than 2,000 persons. As a result, HPE will start the corresponding periodic and current reporting requirements. So the only SEC filing that HPE had to make in connection with the distribution of its stock to the existing HP shareholders was a Form 10.
To simplify a bit, 1934 Act registration is required if a company has a class of equity security held by 2,000 or more persons or 500 persons who are not accredited investors and over $10 million in assets or if the company wants to list on a national security exchange. Of course HPE met the requirements, and so HPE filed a Form 10. (There is of course more complexity to the registration issue, so if you have to deal with it careful research is required!)
Form 10 is a lot like a Form 10-K and you can see HPE’s Form 10 at:
www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1645590/000119312515338732/0001193125-15-338732-index.htm
In this filing, the Form 10 itself is a shell, and you will find all the relevant information in Exhibit 99.1.
If you have any SEC trivia you would like us to explore, please let Carol or George know, and as always, your thoughts and comments are welcome and appreciated.
One last little trivia note – if you do a ticker search for HP, guess what company has this ticker? Helmerick and Payne, a contract oil and gas drilling company. Who would have guessed?