SEC Comment Letter for KMG America CORP (CIK 0001299210) — Aug 31, 2004
KMG America CORP (CIK 0001299210)
Date: Aug. 31, 2004 · CIK: 0001299210 · Accession: 0000000000-04-027868
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File numbers found in text: 333-117911
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<DOCUMENT> <TYPE>LETTER <SEQUENCE>1 <FILENAME>filename1.txt <TEXT> Mail Stop 3-09 August 31, 2004 Mr. Kenneth U. Kuk Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer and Secretary KMG America Corporation 6306 Maple Ridge Excelsior, Minnesota 55331 Re: KMG America Corporation Registration Statement on Form S-1 File Number 333-117911 Dear Mr. Kuk: We have reviewed your filing and have the following comments. Where indicated, we think you should revise your document in response to these comments. If you disagree, we will consider your explanation as to why our comment is inapplicable or a revision is unnecessary. Please be as detailed as necessary in your explanation. In some of our comments, we may ask you to provide us with supplemental information so we may better understand your disclosure. After reviewing this information, we may or may not raise additional comments. Please understand that the purpose of our review process is to assist you in your compliance with the applicable disclosure requirements and to enhance the overall disclosure in your filing. We look forward to working with you in these respects. We welcome any questions you may have about our comments or on any other aspect of our review. Feel free to call us at the telephone numbers listed at the end of this letter. Form S-1 Comments Applicable to the Entire Prospectus 1. Please note that when you file a pre-effective amendment containing pricing-related information, we may have additional comments. 2. Please note that when you file a pre-effective amendment that includes your price range, it must be bone fide. We interpret this to mean that your range may not exceed $2 if you price below $20 and 10% if you price above $20. 3. Please note that where we provide examples to illustrate what we mean by our comments, they are examples and not complete lists. If our comments are applicable to portions of the filing that we have not cited as examples, please make the appropriate changes in accordance with our comments. 4. Where comments on one section also relate to disclosure in another section, please make parallel changes to all affected disclosures. This will eliminate the need for us to repeat similar comments. 5. Please provide us proofs of all graphic, visual or photographic information you will provide in the printed prospectus prior to its use, for example in a preliminary prospectus. Please note we may have comments regarding this material. 6. Please provide us annotated documentary support for the following statements or revise your filing appropriately: * ". . . most worksite insurance companies, which generally do not offer equity incentives to their sales and marketing personnel." (page 3) * "As a result, many companies have reassessed how they deploy capital and in many cases, multi-line companies have chosen to shift capital away, or withhold further capital from, their life and health insurance divisions." (page 88) * "The current difficult investment environment has led a number of multi-line insurance companies in the United States and Europe to divest some or all of their life and health insurance and/or annuity operations." (pages 88-89) * "There has been some consolidation in the life and health insurance industry over the last few years." (page 89) * "Based on 2003 revenues, Kanawha ranks in the top 10% of the 386 third-party plan administrators that are members of the Society of Professional Benefit Administrators." (page 96) 7. Please eliminate the jargon and technical terms in the forepart of your prospectus. For example, these words and phrases appear in your summary and risk factors sections: * "voluntary insurance" * "group insurance" * "in force" * "managed care services" * "risk-adjusted returns" * "reinsurance" * "investment grade securities" * "ceded reinsurance" * "coinsurance contracts" * "separate accounts" * "surrender charges" Instead, please explain these concepts in concrete, everyday language. Further, place any industry terms you use in context so those potential investors who do not work in your industry can understand the disclosure. See Rule 421(d)(2)(ii) of Regulation C. 8. We note your use of the following acronyms in the forepart of your prospectus: VBOs, VOBA, SAP, HIPAA, DAC and NAIC. Please reduce your over-reliance on such acronyms in the forepart of the prospectus and please define these acronyms where first used. 9. If you must include jargon or technical terms in the main body of the prospectus (as opposed to the forepart of the prospectus), you must make every effort to concisely explain these terms where you first use them. Where this is simply not possible, a glossary is permissible. 10. We note that you refer to estimates prepared by Eastbridge Consulting Group, Inc. on pages 2, 4, 85 and 94. Please tell us who Eastbridge Consulting Group, Inc. is and how they arrived at these estimates. Please disclose any payments you have made or received from Eastbridge and any relationship you have or have had with them. 11. We note your statement on pages 4 and 85 that "Life and health insurance industry premiums, including annuities, in the United States exceeded $500 billion for the year 2002, with approximately $200 billion of statutory equity capital for the year 2002 . . . ." We believe that reference to this $500 billion industry figure is inappropriate as it is much broader than the market you expect to target. Please revise or explain. 12. We note the following statements you have made regarding cycles in the industry and believe that some of these statements appear to be inconsistent. Please revise or explain as appropriate. * "Because we believe our product offerings generally will not be correlated to each other or the general economy, we do not expect our results of operations to be significantly impacted by pricing cycles." (Pages 1 and 94) Since your statement in the next bullet point indicates that your industry is not subject to pricing cycles, we do not understand why you discuss how your product offering will not be impacted by pricing cycles. * "As a result, the life and health insurance business has relatively low underwriting risk compared to the property and casualty insurance business and is not subject to `commodity-like` pricing cycles . . . ." (Pages 4 and 85) If your industry is not subject to pricing cycles, we do not understand how your business may be materially adversely affected by insurance industry cycles as stated in the next bullet point. * "Our results of operations and financial condition may be materially adversely affected from time to time by . . . insurance industry cycles . . . ." (Page 17) * "While the life and health insurance industry has historically experienced some degree of cyclicality due to variability in market conditions and levels of competition in some product lines, we believe, as a whole, variability in industry performance and financial condition has been significantly less than that of the property and casualty segment of the insurance industry." (Page 85) This statement about some degree of cyclicality in your industry appears to contradict your statement in the second bullet point that your industry is not subject to pricing cycles. 13. Please tell us who the significant shareholders of Kanawha are, the percentage of Kanawha shares beneficially owned, if any of these persons or entities has a relationship with the company and the amount of the acquisition consideration you expect these shareholders will receive 14. Please supplementally confirm to us that the offering cannot be completed without the consummation of the acquisition. We may have additional comments. Pages i and ii 15. Please relocate the three sections located on these pages so that they appear somewhere after the Risk Factors section in the filing. 16. We note your statement that "Market data and forecasts used in this prospectus have been obtained from independent industry sources as well as from research reports prepared for other purposes. We have not independently verified the data obtained from these sources and we cannot assure you of the accuracy or completeness of the data." It is not appropriate to disclaim liability for statements included in your registration statement. Please revise to delete this language. Prospectus Summary, pages 1-13 17. It appears that a key part of your business strategy is to offer both voluntary and group insurance. To the extent practicable, please disclose what percentage of your current insurance business is comprised of each of voluntary and group insurance? 18. We note that currently you only appear to discuss the positive aspects of your company and its strategy in the summary. The summary section should provide a brief, but balanced description of the key aspects of the company as of the latest practicable date. Please revise the summary to also discuss any negative aspects of your company`s experience, strategy and prospects. For example, you should include disclosure discussing the risks involved in your aggressive growth strategy. Please also note that the balancing disclosure you provide should be no less prominent than your positive disclosure. This also means that you cannot satisfy the comment by merely providing a cross-reference to the risk factors section. 19. We note that on pages 3 and 94 you state your target market is comprised of workplaces with 50 to 10,000 employees and includes over 290,000 businesses, but on pages 93 and 99 you state that you intend to market your products to employers with 500 to 10,000 employees. In addition, on page 99, you give 230,000 as the number of businesses in your target market. Please explain or rectify these discrepancies. 20. Please revise your disclosure on page 6 and page 106 so that the income figure you disclose includes the $1.6 million payment. You may then explain that there was a one-time $1.6 million payment. Summary Unaudited Pro Forma Financial Information, page 9 21. If the reference is retained, please name the third-party valuation experts assisting in determining the fair value of assets and liabilities, update the "Expert" section of the filing, and include a consent. Risk Factors, pages 14-37 General 22. Please consider grouping related risk factors together under three classified headings, instead of just two, such as risks related to your company, risks related to your industry and risks related to your offering. 23. Please revise the risk factors where appropriate to replace generic language with specific disclosure of exactly how these risks have affected and will affect your operations, financial condition or business, and if practicable to quantify, the specific and immediate effects to investors of each risk that you have identified. For example, you use general phrases such as "adversely affected" and "material adverse affect" throughout the risk factor section. These vague, generic phrases are subject to varying interpretations and, therefore, do not adequately explain the risk or concern to which you refer. 24. Please revise each subheading to ensure it reflects the risk that you discuss in the text. Many of your subheadings currently either merely state a fact about your business, such as "We will be dependent on independent agents and brokers to market many of our products." or describe an event that may occur in the future, such as "Our services may expose us to professional liability in excess of our insurance coverage." Succinctly state in your subheadings the risks that result from the facts or uncertainties. You may find it helpful to use an "if...then" approach to writing the subheadings, where "if" denotes the risk and the "then" discloses the specific adverse consequences of that risk. Please note that these risk factors have been provided only as examples. Please carefully review each subheading and revise as appropriate. "If we are unable to implement our business strategy or operate our business as we currently expect, our business, results of operations or financial condition may be adversely affected." Page 14 25. Please revise your disclosure in this risk factor to emphasize that heretofore you have had a small presence in the southeastern U.S. targeting a niche market of small employers and groups, but that your business strategy hinges on transforming the Company into a national life and health insurance company targeting large employers. "We may require additional capital in the future which may not be available on favorable terms or at all." Page 14 26. Please revise your disclosure in this risk factor to briefly describe your "business plan." This additional disclosure will help investors better understand the impact of a change in your capital resources or requirements. 27. To the extent practicable, please quantify your future capital requirements. 28. To the extent practicable, please indicate the amount you expect to borrow under a credit facility following the closing of this offering and what you expect to use such amounts for. "We will depend on our key executives. We may not be able to hire and retain key employees or successfully integrate our new management team . . . ." Pages 14-15 29. Please revise to disclose the number of additional managers you expect to hire to implement your business strategy. 30. To the extent that you have experienced problems attracting and retaining key executives in the recent past, please revise to describe these problems. Additionally, if any key employee has plans to retire or leave your company in the near future, please revise the discussion to disclose this information. 31. Please state whether you maintain or will maintain employment contracts with key personnel and disclose the term and termination provisions of the same if applicable. 32. Please disclose whether you have key life insurance policies on any key employees. 33. Please tell us if it is the industry standard to have non- solicitation and non-compete clauses in employment agreements and whether any of your employees` contracts contain or will contain those clauses. "Our future performance cannot be predicted based on the financial information included in this prospectus." Pages 15-16 34. Please revise to briefly explain here the key reasons why Kanawha`s business is not representative of your primary business strategy. We believe this information here will provide more context to an investor reviewing this risk factor. "Our services may expose us to professional liability in excess of our insurance coverage." Page 16 35. Please disclose your level of your insurance coverage. Please also disclose the cost to you of such coverage, if material. "We will be dependent on independent agents and brokers to market many of our products." Pages16-17 36. Please disclose if you rely on any one particular agent, broker or group of either to sell or promote your products. To the extent that you have agents, brokers or groups of either that you are substantially dependent upon, file copies of any agreements with these parties as exhibits to your registration statement and revise your Business section to describe the material terms of these agreements. 37. To the extent that you have experienced difficulties in recruiting or hiring qualified agents and brokers, revise to discuss these difficulties. "Our business, results of operations and financial condition may be adversely affected by many factors beyond our control . . . ." Pages 17-18 38. Please discuss the extent to which the factors you have enumerated have affected your business in the past. To the extent practicable, please quantity the impact these factors have had on your business. 39. You should also elaborate on the five general economic, financial and political conditions at the bottom of page 17 that may adversely affect your business. These bullet points, as written, are not sufficient