Item 4. Controls and Procedures
Item 4. Controls and Procedures.
On November 1, 2018, the Company filed a Current Report on Form 8-K (the “November 2018 Form 8-K”) to disclose deficiencies in internal control over financial reporting. For further information, see the November 2018 Form 8-K and Item 4. “Controls and Procedures” of the Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended September 30, 2018.
Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures
In connection with the preparation of this Form 10-Q, pursuant to Rule 13a-15(b) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), the Company carried out an evaluation with the participation of its management, including its Chief Executive Officer (principal executive officer) and Chief Financial Officer (principal financial officer), of the effectiveness of the design and operation of our disclosure controls and procedures (as defined under Rule 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Exchange Act) as of March 31, 2022.
Based on this evaluation, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer concluded that, because of the material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting discussed below, the Company’s disclosure controls and procedures were not effective as of March 31, 2022, to ensure: (i) that information required to be disclosed by the Company in the reports that it files or submits under the Exchange Act, is recorded, processed, summarized and reported, within the time periods specified in the SEC’s rules and forms, and (ii) that such information is accumulated and communicated to management, including the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, as appropriate, to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure.
The Company’s management is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting, as such term is defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) under the Exchange Act. The Company’s internal control over financial reporting is a process designed by or under the supervision of the Company’s Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, and overseen by the Board of Directors, to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial
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reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with GAAP and includes policies and procedures that:
• Pertain to the maintenance of records that, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the Company’s assets;
• Provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with GAAP, and that the Company’s receipts and expenditures are being made only in accordance with the authorization of its management and directors; and
• Provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use or disposition of the Company’s assets that could have a material effect on the financial statements.
Because of its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting is not intended to provide absolute assurance that a misstatement of the Company’s consolidated financial statements would be prevented or detected. 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 of compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate.
A material weakness is a deficiency, or combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting, such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of the annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis.
Management conducted an evaluation of the effectiveness of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2021 using the criteria in Internal Control - Integrated Framework 2013 issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (the “2013 COSO Framework”). As a result of this evaluation, management concluded, as disclosed in the 2021 Form 10-K, that the Company’s internal control over financial reporting was not effective as of December 31, 2021, because of the material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting discussed below.
• Control Environment: The Company did not have a sufficient number of trained resources with assigned responsibility and accountability for the design, operation and documentation of internal control over financial reporting in accordance with the 2013 COSO Framework.
• Risk Assessment: The Company did not have an effective risk assessment process to identify and evaluate at a sufficient level of detail all relevant risks of material misstatement, including fraud risks.
• Information and Communication: The Company did not have an effective information and communication process that identified and assessed the source of and controls necessary to ensure the reliability of information used in financial reporting and that communicates relevant information about roles and responsibilities for internal control over financial reporting.
• Monitoring Activities: The Company did not have effective monitoring activities to assess the operation of internal control over financial reporting, including the continued appropriateness of control design and level of documentation maintained to support control effectiveness.
• Control Activities: As a consequence of the material weaknesses described above, internal control deficiencies related to the design and operation of process-level controls and general information technology controls were determined to be pervasive throughout the Company’s processes.
While these material weaknesses did not result in material misstatements of the Company’s consolidated financial statements as of and for the year ended December 31, 2021, these material weaknesses create a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of account balances or disclosures in annual or interim consolidated financial statements may not be prevented or detected in a timely manner. Accordingly, the Company concluded that the deficiencies represent material weaknesses in its internal control over financial reporting and its internal control over financial reporting was not effective as of December 31, 2021.
The Company’s independent registered public accounting firm, KPMG LLP, which audited the 2021 consolidated financial statements included in the 2021 Form 10-K, expressed an adverse opinion on the operating effectiveness of the Company's internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2021.
Remediation Plan and Efforts to Address the Previously Identified Material Weaknesses
To remediate the material weaknesses described above, the Company, with the oversight of the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors (the “Audit Committee”), has been pursuing the six remediation steps as originally identified in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018. The Company’s remediation plan was designed with the assistance of management’s outside consultant, an internationally recognized accounting firm. In the first quarter of 2022, the Company began to implement new and revised internal controls over financial reporting designed as part of management’s remediation plan across the organization. The Company continues to work with its outside consultant to assist
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in completing the remaining steps in the remediation plan and believes that its remediation plan will be sufficient to remediate the identified material weaknesses and strengthen its internal control over financial reporting. As the Company continues to evaluate, implement and works to improve, its internal control over financial reporting, management may determine that additional measures to address control deficiencies or modifications to the remediation plan are necessary.
Through the first quarter of 2022, the Company has completed certain steps in its remediation plan, including:
• for certain processes, developed new and revised existing process narratives and identified risks of material misstatement inherent to those processes;
• developed new controls and revised the design of existing controls for a significant number of relevant key controls to mitigate the aforementioned risks, inclusive of general information technology controls and entity-level controls;
• conducted initial organization-wide training sessions with all control owners;
• increased resources in the Company’s internal audit function and created and staffed a controls compliance group charged with monitoring and facilitating compliance with the Company’s responsibilities under the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 (“SOX”);
• implemented a software solution to assist in monitoring and documenting compliance with SOX;
• migrated certain components of a legacy information technology system onto a common information technology environment; and
• implemented new and revised internal controls over financial reporting for certain processes and information technology environments.
The following remaining activities are scheduled for completion in the first half of 2022 in anticipation of conducting management’s testing that will begin in the first half of 2022 in support of issuing management’s assessment of internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2022:
• completion of the identification of risks arising from inappropriate segregation of duties and fraud risks;
• completion of risk assessment and control design for the remaining populations of processes and controls;
• implementation of controls across the remaining processes and information technology environments; and
• ongoing training with control owners, as necessary.
The Company continues to monitor the impact of employee turnover, the COVID-19 pandemic and other external factors on its remediation plan and its assessment of internal control over financial reporting. The material weaknesses cannot be considered remediated until the applicable controls have operated for a sufficient period of time and management has concluded, through testing, that these controls are operating effectively. The Company cannot assure you when it will remediate the identified material weaknesses, nor can it be certain whether additional actions will be required. Moreover, the Company cannot assure you that additional material weaknesses will not arise in the future.
Changes in Internal Control Over Financial Reporting
The Company is in the process of making certain changes in its internal controls to remediate the material weaknesses as described above. The execution of the material aspects of this remediation plan began in the second quarter of 2019. Except as noted above with respect to the completion of certain steps in the remediation plan and implementation of certain new and revised internal controls over financial reporting, there has been no change in the Company’s internal control over financial reporting during the quarter ended March 31, 2022, that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, its internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) under the Exchange Act).
PART II - OTHER INFORMATION
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