Patrick M. Byrne, the Chairman and CEO of Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK ), confirmed in a phone interview with Bitcoin Magazine that the SEC had declared the company’s Form S-3 statement effective, bypassing a large hurdle for the crypto-friendly firm.
“Effective means approved in this sense,” Byrne said. “You file it [Form S-3] with the SEC, you go back and forth until it is approved, and then it sits on the shelf. It can sit on the shelf for 3-4 years before you have to do the process again.”
Form S-3 is a registration form mandated by the SEC that gives established companies an easier path to issue publicly traded securities. If a company has at least 12 months of properly filed reports with the SEC and is compliant with the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, it is eligible to file a Form S-3.
“Once it has been approved, it [an actual offering of securities] doesn’t require any further approval,” he said.
But while the company has approval to issue securities, it has made no determination yet on if it will.
“I can’t confirm that there will be an offer. I can’t comment on if there will be an offer” Byrne said. “I am studying that now, trying to decide if there should be one, but I can’t even comment if there is one on the horizon.”
In its Form S-3, Overstock.com sought approval to issue up to $500 million in new securities in the form of either common stock, preferred stock, depositary shares, warrants, debt securities, or units. In its Form S-3, the company said:
“This prospectus provides you with a general description of the security we may offer. Each time we sell securities, we will provide a prospectus supplement that will contain specific information about the terms of that offering.”The SEC approval is a boon […]
