SEC Company Response from SALTON SEA FUNDING CORP (CIK 0000949149) — Jun 30, 2005
SALTON SEA FUNDING CORP (CIK 0000949149)
Date: June 30, 2005 · CIK: 0000949149 · Accession: 0001081316-05-000058
AI Filing Summary & Sentiment
Referenced dates: June 10, 2005, May 13, 2005
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Salton Sea Funding Corp Letter
June
30,
2005
VIA
EDGAR
AND FACSIMILE
Mr.
William Choi
Accounting
Branch Chief
Division
of Corporation Finance
Securities
and Exchange Commission
450
Fifth
Street, N.W.
Mail
Stop
0308
Washington,
D.C. 20549
RE: Salton
Sea Funding Corporation
Form
10-K for
the Year Ended December 31, 2004
File
No.
33-95538
Dear
Mr.
Choi:
This
correspondence is being filed to complete our response to comments with respect
to Salton Sea Funding Corporation (“Funding Corporation” or the “Company”) and
its Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2004 (the “Form 10-K”) received
from the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) by
letter dated May 13, 2005 (the “Comments”). The numbering below corresponds to
the numbering of the Comments, which we have incorporated into this response
letter in italics.
Item
8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data
General
15.
Every
issuer of a registered security that is guaranteed and every guarantor
of
a registered security must file the financial statements required
by Rule
3-10 of Regulation S-X. We have the following comments regarding
the form
and content of the financial statements included in your Annual
Report.
a.
Please
tell us your basis for filing combined financial statements for
the Salton
Sea and Partnership Guarantors. If you have relied on one of the
exceptions of the general rule of paragraph (a)(1) of Rule 3-10
of
Regulation S-X, please tell us the exception you relied upon and
explain
to us in detail why you comply with the conditions in the
exception.
Response:
The
Company is not seeking to directly rely on one of the specific prescribed
exceptions to the general rule of paragraph (a)(1) of Rule 3-10 of Regulation
S-X as the basis for filing combined financial statements for the Salton
Sea
Guarantors and Partnership Guarantors.1
Rather,
the Company is relying on Article 3A of Regulation S-X, pursuant to which
the
Company has determined that the most meaningful financial presentation is
combined financial statements for the Salton Sea Guarantors as a group, the
Partnership Guarantors as a group and separate financial statements for the
Royalty Guarantor. In adopting Rule 3-10 of Regulation S-X, the Commission
recognized that there are circumstances “where full Securities Act and Exchange
Act disclosure by both the issuer and the guarantors may not be useful to
an
investment decision and, therefore, may not be necessary.” Securities Act
Release 33-7878. Rule 3-10 largely codified prior Commission interpretations
and
was intended in part “to eliminate substantially the need for staff ‘no-action’
letters in this area.”Id.
While
Rule 3-10 did create greater certainty, even around the time of effectiveness
of
Rule 3-10, the Commission recognized that it may still need to consider requests
for reporting relief for related issuers and guarantors in cases involving
“novel facts or legal issues.” See Sterling
Chemicals,
Inc.
no-action letter, dated December 13, 2000.
Background:
The
following is an overview of Funding Corporation and each of the
Guarantors.
§
Funding
Corporation, a wholly owned direct subsidiary of Magma Power Company
(“Magma”), was organized in 1995 for the sole purpose of acting as issuer
of senior secured notes and bonds (the “Securities”). The Securities are
payable from the proceeds of payments made of principal and interest
on
senior secured notes by the Partnership Guarantors, Salton Sea
Guarantors
and Royalty Guarantor except for Salton Sea Minerals Corporation
and
CalEnergy Minerals LLC, its wholly owned direct subsidiary, (collectively,
the “Guarantors”) to Funding Corporation. Funding Corporation has no more
than a 1%, direct or indirect, ownership interest in
the Guarantors, excluding Salton Sea Minerals Corporation and CalEnergy
Minerals LLC. The remainder of the ownership interests in the Guarantors,
with the exception of Salton Sea Minerals Corporation and CalEnergy
Minerals LLC, is owned by Magma. Salton Sea Minerals Corporation
is a
wholly owned direct subsidiary of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company,
an
indirect owner of 50% of the common stock on Magma. Please note
that the
operations of CalEnergy Minerals LLC were ceased in September 2004
and
presented as discontinued operations in the Company’s 2004 financial
statements based on the application of guidance in FASB Statement
No. 144.
There is no other activity within Salton Sea Minerals
Corporation.
1 The
closest applicable specific exception stated in Rule 3-10 based on our
facts is
Rule 3-10(f), which provides as follows:
(f)
Multiple subsidiary guarantors of securities issued by the parent
company of
those subsidiaries. When a parent company issues securities and more than
one of its subsidiaries guarantee those securities, the registration
statement,
parent company annual report, or parent company quarterly report need
not
include financial statements of the subsidiary guarantors if:
(1)
Each
of the subsidiary guarantors is 100% owned by the parent company
issuer;
(2)
The
guarantees are full and
unconditional;
(3)
The
guarantees are joint and several;
and
(4)
The
parent company’s financial statements are filed for the periods specified
by 210.3-01 and 210.3-02 and include, in a footnote, condensed
consolidating financial information for the same periods with
a separate
column for: (i) the parent company; (ii) the subsidiary guarantors
on a
combined basis; (iii) any other subsidiaries of the parent
company on a
combined basis; (iv) consolidating adjustments; and (v) the
total
consolidated amounts.
As
the
Company, itself, does not own 100% of each of the Guarantors, the Company
does
not technically meet one of the four conditions of this exception to the
general
rule, however, the Company believes its reporting is the most meaningful
presentation as discussed within this response letter.
2
§
The
Partnership Guarantors’ primary assets are the direct and indirect
ownership of five geothermal power facilities and a zinc recovery
project,
which ceased operations in September 2004.
§
The
Salton Sea Guarantors’ primary assets are the direct and indirect
ownership of five geothermal power facilities, which are under
common
control, management and ownership.
§
The
Royalty Guarantor is a single purpose entity which was established
to
receive a royalty cash flow from the sale of power generated by
facilities
owned by other Guarantors.
For
further clarification of the ownership of and interests in the legal entities
comprising the Salton Sea Guarantors and the Partnership Guarantors please
see
Exhibit A to this letter.2
At
the
time Funding Corporation filed its initial registration statement with the
Commission in 1995 to the present, the Company has believed
that
its
situation involves novel facts and legal issues and the Company’s management has
determined that the most meaningful financial presentation is combined financial
statements for the Salton Sea Guarantors as a group, the Partnership Guarantors
as a group and separate financial statements for the Royalty Guarantor rather
than nineteen separate financial statements of each of the nineteen individual
Guarantors, based on analysis of the following factors: (1) financial unity,
(2)
common control, common management, common operations and common domicile,
(3)
joint and several nature of the respective guarantees of the Company’s debt
securities and the respective secured project notes and (4) meaningfulness
of
disclosure.
2
Please note that Exhibit A is an organizational chart substantially
similar to the chart provided with our letter dated June 10, 2005; provided,
however, that such chart has been corrected by removing “Salton Sea Power
Company” from “Salton Sea Guarantors” portion of the diagram. As correctly
indicated in the text of the chart, Salton Sea Power Company is not a
Salton Sea
Guarantor, although it was inadvertently included in “Salton Sea Guarantors”
portion of the diagram.
3
·
Financial
Unity
As
explained below, we believe the various contractual arrangements among the
Company and the Guarantors in effect provide the economic equivalent of 100%
equity ownership of the Guarantors by the Company. This financial unity is
an
important consideration in providing meaningful information to investors
for
evaluation of the creditworthiness of the Company and the
Guarantors.
Although
directly or indirectly the Company owns no more than 1% of any of the
Guarantors, the documents entered into in connection with the issuance by
the
Company of its debt securities require all of the Guarantors to deposit all
of
their respective revenues into a restricted revenue fund held by a collateral
agent on behalf of the Company for the benefit of the holders of the Company’s
debt securities. The restricted revenue fund is recorded as cash on the
Company's balance sheet. The moneys in the restricted revenue fund are combined
and used to pay the operating and maintenance expenses of all of the Guarantors
and certain administrative expenses of the Company associated with, as well
as
principal, interest and reserve requirements related to, all of its debt
securities. Only after such prior payments are made and certain combined
debt
service coverage ratio tests are satisfied are remaining funds available
to make
distributions as directed by the Guarantors. None of the financing documents
associated with the Company’s debt securities differentiate among the Guarantors
with respect to such deposits and payments. The Guarantors are effectively
treated as equal undivided parts of a unified entity.
These
same financing documents also provide for: (1) other restrictive covenants
imposed upon the operations and management of the Guarantors, including
restrictions on the Guarantors making distributions from moneys in the revenue
fund except as described above,3
(2)
loans from the Company to each of the Salton Sea Guarantors, the Partnership
Guarantors and the Royalty Guarantor, the installments of principal and interest
of which match, and are utilized to pay principal of and interest on the
Company’s debt securities, (3) pledges of substantially all of the assets and
cash flows from the Guarantors to secure such loans, and (4) guarantees of
the
Salton Sea Guarantors, the Partnership Guarantors and the Royalty Guarantor
to
repay all series of the Company’s outstanding debt securities, regardless of
which series of such securities were utilized to fund the particular loans
made
by the Company to the Guarantors.
We
believe these facts and circumstances, together with those described below,
effectively create financial unity among the respective Guarantors that makes
the inclusion of the combined financial statements for each of the Salton
Sea
Guarantors and the Partnership Guarantors more meaningful to investors. In
addition, we believe that presentation of nineteen separate sets of financial
statements covering the nineteen individual Guarantors is not meaningful
to
investors and that
level of detail could be confusing to investors and prevent them from gaining
a
true measure of the Salton Sea Guaratantors’ and the Partnership Guarantors’
financial performance.
3
In particular, these documents contain customary covenants, subject to
important
qualifications and limitations, that restrict the Company’s and the Guarantors’
ability, among other things, to pay dividends and make other restricted
payments, incur additional debt, create or permit certain liens, merge,
consolidate or transfer assets or enter into transactions with
affiliates.
4
·
Common
Control, Common
Management,
Common
Operations
and Common
Domicile
As
discussed above, pursuant to the financing documents between Funding Corporation
and the Guarantors, Funding Corporation has the ability to exercise significant
influence and control over the operation and financial policies of each of
the
Guarantors.
All
of
the Salton Sea Guarantors and the Partnership Guarantors, excluding Salton
Sea
Minerals Corporation and CalEnergy Minerals LLC (whose operations were ceased
in
September 2004 and presented as discontinued operations in the Partnership
Guarantors’