SEC Company Response from VITRO SA DE CV (CIK 0000880582) — Nov 30, 2005
VITRO SA DE CV (CIK 0000880582)
Date: Nov. 30, 2005 · CIK: 0000880582 · Accession: 0000880582-05-000029
AI Filing Summary & Sentiment
Referenced dates: August 5, 2005
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SEC Response
[MILBANK TWEED LETTERHEAD]
November
30, 2005
Ms. Nili Shah
Accounting Branch Chief
Division of Corporation Finance
Securities and Exchange Commission
Washington, DC 20549
Re: Vitro ,
S.A. de C.V.
Form 20-F/A for the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2004
Filed July 7, 2005; File No. 1-10905
Dear Ms. Shah:
On behalf of Vitro,
S.A. de C.V. (“Vitro” or the “Company”), set forth
below are responses to the comment letter dated August 5, 2005 (the “Comment
Letter”) from the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the
“SEC” or the “Commission”), related to Vitro’s
Form 20-F/A for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2004 (the “Form 20-F”).
This letter is also being filed on EDGAR. Additionally, five copies of this
letter are being delivered to you.
All references in Vitro’s
response to pages and captioned sections are to the Form 20-F. Capitalized
terms used in this letter and not otherwise defined herein have the meaning
as ascribed to them in the Form 20-F. References to “we”, “us”
or “our” in the responses set forth below refer in each case to
Vitro.
For convenience, we
have included the SEC staff’s comments in italics below followed by
Vitro’s response. Vitro believes that it has replied to the SEC staff’s
comments in the Comment Letter in full. To the extent necessary, we would
like to discuss these matters with you, including your view concerning whether
an additional amendment to the Form 20-F is required.
The
material enclosed with this response letter supplementally has been provided
to the SEC staff on a confidential and supplemental basis pursuant to Rule
12b-4 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. In accordance
with these rules, we respectfully request that these materials be returned
promptly following the completion of their review by the SEC staff.
Form
20-F for the year ended December 31, 2004
Item 4. Information
on the Company, page 18
1. We note your
table on page 24 that details the products you provide by your reportable segments,
which are further broken down by sub-categories. Based on the different products
listed for each sub-categories and the MD&A results of operations discussion
regarding the pricing pressures in the Mexican construction market and the North
American automotive industry crisis, it is unclear what your operating segments
are, whether you are aggregating operating segments into reportable segments
in accordance with 17 of SFAS 131, and whether these products meet the aggregation
criteria such as having similar products and having similar economic characteristics.
Furthermore, it is unclear how glass containers are similar products to raw
materials and machinery and molds. As such, please provide us with copies of
all the different types of reports reviewed by your CODM on a regular basis
(e.g., daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.).
If you
are aggregating operating segments to arrive at your three reportable segments,
please provide us with a comprehensive analysis of each of the criteria required
to be met for aggregation per paragraph 17 of SFAS 131. This analysis should
include the revenues, gross profits, gross profit margins, operating profits,
and operating profit margins, along with any other information you believe
would be useful for each of your operating segments by reportable segment
for each of the three years ended December 31, 2004 and the 6-month periods
ended June 30, 2005 and 2004 to help us understand how these operating segments
are economically similar. Specifically address any differences in the trends
these financial indicators depict (e.g., if gross profit margin is decreasing
for one operating segment and increasing for another).
At a minimum,
it appears to us that you should revise your filing in the future to provide
information about products and services disclosures required by paragraph
37 of SFAS 131 (e.g., construction glass, automotive glass, glass containers,
raw materials, machinery and molds, glassware, and metal flatware) within
the footnotes to the consolidated financial statements.
Response:
We operate our business,
prepare and review financial reports, reward employee performance and allocate
Company resources at the level of three operating segments: Flat Glass, Glass
Containers and Glassware. Each of these three operating segments has separate
manufacturing processes, facilities, markets, customers and resources that
are not shared by the other two operating segments. In addition, each operating
segment has a separate administrative staff (i.e., a designated CEO and CFO,
as well as its own human resources department), whose functions are fully
integrated within that operating segment and which are also not shared with
the other two operating segments.
Flat Glass Segment:
The Flat Glass segment
focuses on the manufacturing, processing and distribution of flat glass. The
Flat Glass segment is a vertically integrated business unit that is dedicated
to flat glass production using four float glass furnaces (three are wholly-owned
and one is owned by a joint venture business). There is a single product made:
flat glass, from which derivative value-added flat glass sub-products are
sold to the most profitable and readily available markets, including automotive,
laminated, tempered, safety and insulated glass markets and other value-added
sub-products sold to the construction industry. Our Chief Operating Decision
Maker (the “CODM”) does not consider separately the results of
specific business components within the Flat Glass Segment. As described below,
financial information that is reviewed on a regular basis by our CODM is for
the purpose of assessing and analyzing the financial performance of the Flat
Glass Segment as a whole.
Glass Containers Segment:
The Glass Containers
segment manufactures and distributes soda lime glass containers for the food,
beverage, pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. The Glass Containers business
is dedicated to the manufacture of a single class of products: glass containers.
The Glass Container segment is also a vertically integrated business unit
whose sale of raw materials, machinery and molds for the glass industry are
primarily intra-segment sales. This business unit uses raw materials and machinery
and molds in its productive process to ultimately produce glass containers.
Glassware Segment:
The Glassware segment
manufactures and distributes glassware products, including flatware, stemware,
bakeware and glass home decoration products for the individual consumer, glassware
and flatware for the food service markets and coffee carafes, blender jars,
lids, meter covers, candle holders and industrial-grade lighting glassware
products. This business unit like our other two operating segments is also
a vertically integrated business dedicated to provide glass tableware products.
Our metal flatware component is a complementary micro-business, which is incorporated
into the Glassware segment (represents less than 1%), whose products are sold
to the same market and utilize the same distribution network.
The three operating segments
have separate operating plans, whose results are compiled monthly in a Company
executive summary (the “Executive Summary”) for review by our
CODM, which is comprised of the Executive Committee, including our CEO, CFO,
CAO and the CEO’s of each of our three operating segments. We have provided
supplementally for the SEC staff’s review a copy of an Executive Summary.
The CODM evaluates the results of each operating segment based on the information
provided in the Executive Summary when allocating Company resources among
the three operating segments. Further, the CODM makes operating decisions
based on the needs of each operating segment as a whole.
Pursuant to paragraph
10 of SFAS 131, our business is comprised of three operating segments. We
do not aggregate operating segments to arrive at our three reportable segments.
As disclosed in the Form 20-F, we have individual business components within
our three operating segments. However, our CODM does not review their operating
results separately to make decisions about resources to be allocated to these
business components or to assess their performance individually. As these
individual business components do not meet the criteria of item (b) under
paragraph 10 of SFAS 131, we do not believe that they meet the definition
of an operating segment.(1) Therefore, the aggregation
requirements of paragraph 17 are not applicable to these business components.
We believe that the information
provided in the Executive Summary supports the reportable segment disclosures
presented by the Company in the Form 20-F and further demonstrates that the
Company’s operating results are regularly reviewed at the level of our
three operating segments. The CODM assesses the Company’s overall performance
by evaluating the results of these three operating segments individually.
Each of the three operating segments has separate senior management which
reports directly to the CODM. Each operating segment has a separate budget
that is evaluated at this level and financial and employee performance is
assessed based on financial targets established for each operating segment
as a whole. Accordingly, the decisions taken by the CODM, including their
performance evaluations are at the level of the three operating segments,
each taken as a whole based on the Company’s needs and the business
opportunities available to each segment. Our three operating segments individually
meet the qualitative reporting thresholds per paragraph 18 in order for them
to be reported separately as reportable segments.
Based on the foregoing,
we believe that we have properly complied with the requirements of SFAS 131
when disclosing and reporting our segment information in the Form 20-F. As
requested by the SEC staff, we will revise our future filings in order to
report the revenues from external customers for each group of similar products
as required by paragraph 37 of SFAS 131 within the footnotes to our Consolidated
Financial Statements, which will include information about construction glass,
automotive glass, glass containers, glassware, and metal flatware.
(1)
Paragraph 10
of SFAS 131 provides in principal part as follows: "An operating segment
is a component of an enterprise:
a. That
engages in business activities from which it may earn revenues and incur expenses
(including revenues and expenses relating to transactions with other components
of the same enterprise),
b. Whose
operating results are regularly reviewed by the enterprise's chief operating
decision maker to make decisions about resources to be allocated to the segment
and assess its performance, and
c. For
which discrete financial information is available."
Item 5. Operating and
Financial Review and Prospects, page 38
Results
of Operations, page 41
2. You
state on page 43 that a significant portion of your products in Mexico are generally
determined with reference to U.S. dollar-based prices. We assume that the functional
currency for both you and your customers is the Mexican Peso. Accordingly, please
tell us your consideration of whether the pricing provisions in the contracts
with your customers represent embedded foreign currency derivatives. See paragraphs
12 – 16 of SFAS No. 133.
Response:
We regularly review the
contracts with our customers to determine whether they have the characteristics
of an embedded derivative. With regards to the staff’s comment, we would
like to clarify the statement disclosed in the Form 20-F on page 43. The prices
of a significant portion of our products sold in Mexico are generally determined
with reference to U.S. dollar-based prices. Our sales contracts with our customers
in Mexico are entered into in the ordinary course of business and set forth
the terms and conditions of the sales of our products. In accordance with
such terms and conditions, we are not required to sell, and our customers
are not obligated to purchase, a specified quantity of products under our
sales contracts and therefore our sales contracts do not represent a commitment
to sell or a right to purchase in the event the established conditions are
not met.
In accordance with paragraph
12 of SFAS No. 133, an embedded derivative instrument should be separated from
its host contract and accounted for as a derivative instrument if each of three
conditions is fulfilled. One of these conditions requires the embedded derivative
instrument to be, when separated, a derivative instrument pursuant to the requirements
of paragraph 6 of SFAS No. 133. Because there is no notional amount in our sales
contracts, condition (a) of paragraph 6 is not satisfied and, therefore, the
embedded derivative instrument should not be separated from its host contract.
Accordingly, the pricing provisions in these contracts do not represent embedded
foreign currency derivatives.
Liquidity
and Capital Resources, page 49
3. We note that
on page 54, you state your 11 3/8% Vicap Notes are registered under the Securities
Act, which were issued by Vicap (now known as SOFIVSA) your subsidiary, and
guaranteed by you. As such, you are required to either provide the financial
statements of the issuer of the guaranteed securities registered or provide
the required disclosures if one of the exceptions to the general rule are met
in accordance with Rule 3-10 of Regulation S-X. Please tell us whether you meet
one of the exceptions to the general rule and provide us with the disclosure
you intend to include in future filings, or amend your Form 20-F to provide
the audited financial statements of the issuer of the guaranteed notes.
In addition,
you are also required to include the ratio of earnings to fixed charges in
your Form 20-F and include the calculation of the ratios as an exhibit. If
the ratio under Mexican GAAP is materially different from the ratio that would
be calculated in accordance with US GAAP, then you are also required to show
the ratio based on the figures resulting from the reconciliation to US GAAP.
Refer to Item 503(d) of Regulation S-K for guidance. Please confirm to us
that you will provide such information in future filings.
Response:
The 11 3/8 Vicap Notes
registered under the Securities Act were issued by Vicap (now known as SOFIVSA),
our 100% owned finance subsidiary, and fully and unconditionally guaranteed
by Vitro. Accordingly, we believe that we meet the exception provided under
Rule 3-10 (b) of Regulation S-X, as the issuer of the Vicap Notes, SOFIVSA,
is our finance subsidiary and the Vicap Notes are fully and unconditionally
guaranteed by Vitro and no other subsidiary of Vitro guarantees payment on
the securities.
We have not previously
disclosed in a footnote to our Consolidated Financial Statements the information
required by Rule 3-10 (b) of Regulation S-X, but we have disclosed this information
in the forepart of the Form 20-F. In future filings we will disclose in a
footnote to our financial statements the following information:
* SOFIVSA, is a 100%
owned finance sub