Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk
ITEM 7A. QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK.
The primary objective of our investment activities is to preserve our capital to fund operations and to facilitate business development activities. We also seek to maximize income from our investments without assuming significant interest rate risk, liquidity risk, or risk of default by investing in investment grade securities with maturities of four years or less. Our exposure to market risk is confined to investments in cash and cash equivalents, marketable securities, and long term marketable securities. As of December 31, 2021, we had unrestricted cash and cash equivalents, marketable securities, and long term marketable securities of $458.8 million.
In connection with the 2023 Notes, we have separately entered into Convertible Note Hedge Transactions and Warrant Transactions to reduce the potential dilution of the Company's common stock upon conversion of the 2023 Notes, and to partially offset the cost to purchase the Convertible Note Hedge Transactions, respectively.
Our cash and cash equivalents consist primarily of cash held at banks and investments in highly liquid financial instruments with an original maturity of three months or less. Our marketable securities, which are reported at fair value, consist of investments in U.S. Treasury bills and notes; bank certificates of deposit; various U.S. governmental agency debt securities; corporate and municipal debt securities; and other fixed income securities. We place all investments with governmental, industrial, or financial institutions whose debt is rated as investment grade. We generally hold these securities to maturities of one to four years. Because of the relatively short period that we hold our investments and because we generally hold these securities to maturity, we do not believe that an increase in interest rates would have any significant impact on the realizable value of our investments. We do not have any currency or other derivative financial instruments other than outstanding warrants to purchase common stock and the convertible note hedges.
We may contract with clinical research organizations (CROs) and investigational sites globally. Currently, we have only one ongoing trial, which is being conducted outside the U.S. for SPN-817. We do not hedge our foreign currency exchange rate risk. Transactions denominated in currencies other than the U.S. dollar are recorded based on exchange rates at the time such transactions arise. As of December 31, 2021, and December 31, 2020, substantially all of our liabilities were denominated in the U.S. dollar.
Inflation generally affects us by increasing our cost of labor and the cost of services provided by our vendors. We do not believe that inflation and changing prices over the years ended December 31, 2021, and 2020 had a significant impact on our consolidated results of operations.
93
Table of Contents
Text extracted from the filing as submitted to EDGAR. Formatting, tables and exhibits are simplified for reading; the original document is authoritative for anything you rely on.