SEC Company Response from Genasys Inc. (GNSS) (CIK 0000924383) (GNSS) — Sep 7, 2005
Genasys Inc. (GNSS) (CIK 0000924383)
Date: Sept. 7, 2005 · CIK: 0000924383 · Accession: 0001019687-05-002531
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Response Letter
September
7, 2005
VIA
EDGAR AND OVERNIGHT COURIER
Securities
and Exchange Commission
Division
of Corporation Finance
450
Fifth
Street, N.W., Mail Stop 0407
Washington,
D.C. 20549
Attention:
Larry
Spirgel
Assistant
Director
Re:
American
Technology Corporation
Form
10-K for Fiscal Year Ended September 30, 2004
Filed
December 28, 2004
Forms
10-Q for Fiscal Quarters Ended March 31, 2005 and
June
30, 2005
File
No. 0-24248
Dear
Mr.
Spirgel:
We
are
responding to the comments in a letter from the Securities and Exchange
Commission, dated August 18, 2005, addressed to Mr. Michael A. Russell, Chief
Financial Officer and Secretary of American Technology Corporation. We sometimes
refer to American Technology Corporation as "ATC."
To
facilitate your review of our responses to your comments, we have numbered
the
paragraphs in the following discussion to correspond to the numbering of the
paragraphs of your letter of August 18, 2005. Our responses to the comments
are
italicized.
Our
outside legal counsel had a telephone conversation with Albert G. Pappas,
Staff Attorney, on August 24, 2005, and our responses to comments 1, 2, 4,
5, 11
and 13 reflect that discussion.
Securities
and Exchange Commission
September 7, 2005
Page 2
Form
10-K for Fiscal Year Ended September 30, 2004
Item
9A. Controls and Procedures, page 37
1.
We
note your disclosure that your disclosure controls and procedures
are
"designed to ensure that material information related to us, including
our
consolidated subsidiaries, is recorded, processed, summarized and
reported
within the time periods specified in the SEC rules and forms." Please
note
that under Rule 13a-15(e) of the Exchange Act, the term disclosure
controls and procedures means controls and procedures that are designed
to
ensure that information required to be disclosed in the reports that
you
file under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and
reported, within the time periods specified in the Commission's rules
and
forms and are also effective to ensure that information required
to be
disclosed in the reports that you file or submit under the Exchange
Act is
accumulated and communicated to your management, including your principal
executive and principal financial officers, to allow timely decisions
regarding required disclosure. See Rule 13a-15(e) of the Exchange
Act.
Please revise accordingly.
Issuer's
Response
We
supplementally confirm that during all reporting periods subject to the Form
10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2004, and each of the Form 10-Q's
for the fiscal quarters ended December 31, 2004, March 31, 2005 and June 30,
2005, we maintained, and we continue to maintain, disclosure controls and
procedures designed to ensure that material information related to us is
recorded, processed, summarized and reported with the time periods specified
in
the Commission's rules and forms, and designed to ensure that information
required to be disclosed by us in the reports that we file or submit under
the
Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to our management, including our
co-principal executive officers and principal financial officer, to allow timely
decisions regarding required disclosure. We further confirm supplementally
that
we have no consolidated subsidiaries.
In
future filings, we will describe the design of our disclosure controls and
procedures using the language as set forth in your comment
above.
2.
We
note your disclosure that your "co-principal executive officers and
principal financial officer concluded, as of the date of such evaluation,
that, except
as set forth below,
the design and operation of such disclosure controls and procedures
were
effective." (emphasis added) Given the exception noted, it remains
unclear
whether your chief executive officer and chief financial officer
have
concluded that your disclosure controls and procedures are effective
or
not effective. Please revise your disclosure to state, in clear and
unqualified language, the conclusions reached by your chief executive
officer and your chief financial officer on the effectiveness of
your
disclosure controls and procedures. For example, if true, you can
state
that given the identified issue regarding the "tracking of and disclosure
relating to Section 16 filings," your disclosure controls and procedures
are not effective. You should not, however, state the conclusion
in your
current disclosure, which appears to state that your disclosure controls
and procedures are effective except to the extent they are not effective.
Please amend your Form 10-K accordingly.
Securities
and Exchange Commission
September 7, 2005
Page 3
Issuer's
Response
We
supplementally confirm that with respect to their evaluations of the
effectiveness of disclosure controls and procedures performed in connection
with
the filing of the Form 10-K/A (Amendment No. 2) on March 8, 2005, our
co-principal executive officers and principal financial officer determined
that
disclosure controls and procedures were not effective as of September 30, 2004
as a result of the exception noted in paragraph (a) of Item 9A of such report.
Please see our response to comment 3 below for more information concerning
this
deficiency in disclosure controls and procedures.
In
future filings, we will disclose the conclusions of our co-principal executive
officers and principal financial officer regarding the effectiveness of our
disclosure controls and procedures, with a single, unqualified conclusion as
to
whether such disclosure controls and procedures were effective or
ineffective.
3.
Please
describe the "steps to improve our tracking of and disclosure relating
to
Section 16 filings" that you implemented and disclose whether these
steps
have corrected this issue. Please disclose the date you identified
the
failure to disclose the late Section 16 filing and the respective
dates
you implemented each step to improve your
procedures.
Issuer's
Response
We
supplementally advise you that we discovered in early March 2005 that we had
failed to disclose a single late Section 16 filing during the fiscal year ended
September 30, 2004, in Item 10 of our Form 10—K/A (Amendment No. 1) filed
January 28, 2005. The error was discovered in connection with review of our
proxy materials for the 2005 annual meeting, which materials are also required
to contain disclosure of late Section 16 filings during the prior fiscal year.
We determined that the error resulted from a miscommunication with our outside
counsel. An attorney at our outside counsel had been alerted by us of the
existence of a late filing, but another attorney at our outside counsel was
unaware of such determination, and failed to include language in the Form 10-K/A
(Amendment No. 1) disclosing the late filing. As a result of this error, we
implemented in March 2005 a procedure whereby Section 16 filings are tracked
under the supervision of our Chief Financial Officer, who is also charged with
reviewing the disclosure required by Item 405 of Regulation S-K in our annual
reports and proxy statements. We believe these procedures have corrected the
identified deficiency in disclosure controls.
Securities
and Exchange Commission
September 7, 2005
Page 4
4.
We
note your disclosure that "[n]o significant
changes
were made in our internal control over financial reporting… during our
most recent quarter that has materially affected, or is reasonably
likely
to material affect, our internal control over financial reporting."
(emphasis added) Item 308(c) of Regulation S-K requires the disclosure
of
any
change
in your internal control over financial reporting identified in connection
with an evaluation thereof that occurred during your last fiscal
quarter
(or your fourth fiscal quarter in the case of an annual report) that
has
materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect,
your
internal control over financial reporting. Please
revise.
Issuer's
Response
We
supplementally advise you that we made no changes in our internal control over
financial reporting (as defined in Rules 13a-15(f) or 15d-15(f) of the Exchange
Act) in connection with the evaluation required by paragraph (d) of
§ 240.13a-15 or 240.15d-15 of Regulation S-K that occurred during our
fourth fiscal quarter of 2004 that materially affected, or were reasonably
likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial
reporting.
In
future filings, we will conform our disclosure language to the requirements
of
Item 308(c) of Regulation S-K as set forth in your comment
above.
5.
We
note the disclosure under "Limitations" regarding your system of
disclosure controls and procedures and internal controls. When discussing
the design and evaluation of your control system, you discuss inherent
limitations, lack of absolute assurance and resource constraints.
Furthermore, you state that "[t]he design of any system of controls
is
based in part upon certain assumptions about the likelihood of future
events, and any design may not succeed in achieving its stated goals
under
all potential future conditions. Over time, controls may become inadequate
because of changes in conditions or deterioration in the degree of
compliance with policies and
procedures."
The
disclosure in this section is confusing to the extent that it implies
that
your disclosure controls and procedures might not operate effectively
even
under circumstances where your disclosure controls and procedures
should
reasonably be expected to operate effectively. It also implies that
you
will not conduct periodic evaluations of your disclosure controls
and
procedures to determine whether they have become inadequate. If true,
this
would appear to be inconsistent with your regulatory requirement
to
establish and maintain effective disclosure controls and
procedures.
Please
revise to state, if true, that your disclosure controls and procedures
are
designed to provide a reasonable level of assurance of reaching your
desired disclosure control objectives, and remove any disclosure
suggesting otherwise. In addition, and if correct, similarly state
clearly
that your co-principal executive officers and principal financial
officer
concluded that your disclosure controls and procedures are effective
in
reaching that level of reasonable assurance. Finally, delete any
language
that states or implies that your disclosure controls and procedures
will
or could become inadequate over time or that you do not have an obligation
to maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures. In the
alternative, remove this entire paragraph and simply state the conclusion
of your co-principal executive officers and your principal financial
officer regarding the effectiveness of your disclosure controls and
procedures.
Securities
and Exchange Commission
September 7, 2005
Page 5
Issuer's
Response
We
supplementally advise you that our disclosure controls and procedures are
designed to provide a reasonable level of assurance of reaching our desired
disclosure control objectives, and that the conclusions of our co-principal
executive officers and principal financial officer disclosed in each of the
periodic reports referenced in your letter have been consistent with such design
criteria.
In
future filings, we will omit the disclosure under the heading
"Limitations."
Summary
of Accounting Policies
Contract
Manufacturer, page F-9
6.
Please
tell us why it is appropriate to record amounts due from contract
manufactures net of amounts payable to the manufacturer. Refer to
paragraph 5 of FIN 39.
Issuer's
Response
Beginning
in June 2004, we transitioned our manufacturing for our LRAD and HSS products
from our San Diego facility to a contract manufacturer, Pemstar, Inc. of San
Jose California. We purchased completed products from Pemstar, which were stored
in Pemstar warehouses and shipped directly to our customers as required. In
the
event that some of the parts needed to build products were available from us,
we
and Pemstar orally agreed that Pemstar would purchase such parts from us to
include in the manufacture of finished products for us. We agreed that Pemstar
could return such parts to us if they were not used in products manufactured
for
us. Pemstar ordered parts from us only on the basis of firm purchase orders
given by us to Pemstar. This arrangement was used to reflect the agreed transfer
of title and risk of loss, and to simplify th