SEC Company Response from SemiLEDs Corp (LEDS) (CIK 0001333822) (LEDS) — Oct 6, 2010
SemiLEDs Corp (LEDS) (CIK 0001333822)
Date: Oct. 6, 2010 · CIK: 0001333822 · Accession: 0001104659-10-051413
AI Filing Summary & Sentiment
File numbers found in text: 333-168624
Referenced dates: September 28, 2010
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CORRESP 1 filename1.htm ORRICK, HERRINGTON & SUTCLIFFE 43RD FLOOR, GLOUCESTER TOWER THE LANDMARK 15 QUEEN’S ROAD CENTRAL HONG KONG tel 852-2218-9100 fax 852-2218-9200 WWW.ORRICK.COM October 6, 2010 VIA EDGAR AND HAND DELIVERY U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Division of Corporate Finance 100 F Street, N.E. Washington, D.C. 20549 Mail Stop Number 3030 Attn: Russell Mancuso, Branch Chief, Legal Gabriel Eckstein Daniel Morris, Special Counsel Martin James Kevin Vaughn, Branch Chief, Accounting Tara Harkins Re: SemiLEDs Corporation — Registration Statement on Form S-1 Registration No. 333-168624 (the “Registration Statement”) Ladies and Gentlemen: This letter is being filed in response to your letter dated September 28, 2010 (the “Staff Letter”), setting forth comments relating to Amendment No. 2 to the Registration Statement on Form S-1 (“Amendment No. 2”) of SemiLEDs Corporation (“SemiLEDs” or the “Company”) filed on September 14, 2010 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission” or the “Staff”). The Company is concurrently filing today with the Commission Amendment No. 3 to the Registration Statement on Form S-1 (“Amendment No. 3”). For your reference, a copy of Amendment No. 3, together with four marked copies of Amendment No. 3 indicating changes from Amendment No. 2, are enclosed with this letter. The Staff’s comments are repeated below, followed by the Company’s response and a summary of the responsive actions taken. We have included for your convenience specific page numbers in Amendment No. 3 that have revisions to or insertions of language which seek to address the Staff’s comments. PARTNERS: PHOEBUS K.F. CHU · ELIZABETH A. COLE · ANDREW J. DALE · MARK J. LEE · EDWIN K.C. LUK · ROBERT S. PÉ · NEAL A. STENDER · MICHELLE A.M. TAYLOR SOOK YOUNG YEU PARTNERS, ORRICK, HERRINGTON & SUTCLIFFE LLP, REGISTERED FOREIGN LAWYERS: DAVID K. CHO (CALIFORNIA) · DAVID R. HALPERIN (NEW YORK) · MICHAEL T. HAWORTH (CALIFORNIA) · MAURICE L.S. HOO (CALIFORNIA) · ALLEN T.C. SHYU (ILLINOIS) CHRISTOPHER H. STEPHENS (NEW YORK) · JAMES M. TERVO (CALIFORNIA) Amendment No.2 to Registration Statement on Form S-1 Prospectus 1. We note your response to prior comment 3 and reissue the comment. Please provide the requested disclosure in the opening paragraph of the prospectus summary. In response to the Staff’s comment, the Company has revised the disclosure in the opening paragraph on page 1 of the prospectus summary. 2. Please revise the prospectus summary to disclose your reliance on joint venture arrangements. In response to the Staff’s comment, the Company has revised the prospectus summary to disclose that (i) it has interests in three joint ventures, including China SemiLEDs, and (ii) it expects that China SemiLEDs will be an important part of the Company’s strategy in China and that its results of operations will be significantly impacted by the performance of China SemiLEDs. The Company has also disclosed that its joint ventures in Taiwan and Malaysia are at early stages of development and that the Company does not expect substantial business or operations will be conducted through such entities for at least the next 12 months. The Company advises the Staff that it is not the Company’s general strategy to rely on joint venture arrangements. The Company does not currently have any plans to enter into any other joint ventures. The Company’s only significant joint venture entity, China SemiLEDs, was entered into because of the Company’s strategic assessment of the risks and benefits of the fast growing China market for LED products. China SemiLEDs was a unique opportunity for the Company to partner with Chinese government entities and Chinese LED customers to jointly invest, manufacture and sell LED products in China. Given the strategic importance of China SemiLEDs, the Company has included significant disclosure throughout the Registration Statement regarding this investment. In addition, given the potential that China SemiLEDs may be considered a significant subsidiary of the Company in the future, the Company has disclosed on page 54 that it may have to report the financial performance of China SemiLEDs in its future periodic and annual reports that it files with the SEC and that it may be required to include the financial statements of China SemiLEDs in their entirety. As for the Company’s other two joint venture entities, SILQ and SS Optoelectronics, the Company currently does not expect that these two joint venture entities will be a material or significant part of the Company’s business and have therefore limited the disclosure to what has been currently disclosed in the Registration Statement. 3. Please continue to revise the prospectus in response to prior comments 5. In response to the Staff’s comment, the Company has further revised the disclosure in an effort to describe its operations in less technical terms. For example, the Company has simplified the description of its manufacturing process on pages 1 and 88 and added disclosure to explain “epitaxial growth” in less technical terms. The Company has attempted to provide a description of its business and manufacturing technologies so that it will be readily understandable to a person unfamiliar with the LED industry. The Company believes that the LED production process, including the epitaxial growth process and the Company’s vertical LED structure, is inherently technical and scientific in nature and respectfully submits that further simplification of these technical processes and capabilities may risk sacrificing material information regarding the manufacturing process and the Company’s technology, which are important for an investor to fully and adequately evaluate the Company. Risk Factors, page 10 4. Please add an appropriate risk factor addressing the possibility that up to 10% of your net profits will be allocated to a profit-sharing pool as well as the effects that this reduction in profits may have on growth, capital investment, and your stock price. The Company advises the Staff that it previously considered creating a profit-sharing pool of up to 10% of its anticipated net profits for fiscal 2010 and distributing that amount to its employees. However, the Company has decided not to create a profit-sharing pool and advises the Staff that it does not have any plans to create a profit-sharing pool for fiscal 2010 or any future period. The Company has revised the disclosures on page 114 to delete references to the possibility of distributing a profit-sharing pool for fiscal 2010. We may not succeed in cost-effectively producing..., page 16 5. Please expand your revisions in response to prior comment 16 to identify the companies that you know already possess or are developing the technology to produce LED chips in larger wafer sizes. In response to the Staff’s comment, the Company has revised the disclosure on page 19. Variations in our production yields..., page 17 6. It is unclear from your revisions in response to prior comment 17 what caused the specific difficulties in achieving acceptable yields that you refer to in the penultimate paragraph of this risk factor. We therefore reissue our comment. In response to the Staff’s comment, the Company has revised the disclosure on page 19 to include an example of an instance in which a new product initially caused lower yields to give the reader more clarity on what may, from time to time, cause yields to be lower. The Company does not believe that prior instances of lower yields were in any way unique nor were they a result of special circumstances. The Company’s products are difficult to manufacture and involve a high degree of precision and detailed processes such that, as a general matter, when new products or processes are introduced, yields are often lower than with existing products that have had a relatively long manufacturing cycle. The Company believes that this is true generally in manufacturing processes for many products, but is especially so with technology intensive products such as the Company’s. The Company expects that each new product launch or process change may result in relatively lower yields and the Company in its budgeting and operating schedules takes such lower yields into account. We may not be successful in expanding..., page 18 7. We note your response to prior comment [18]. · Please revise the prospectus to disclose the information contained in your response to the first bullet of prior comment [18]. In response to the Staff’s comment, the Company has revised the disclosure on pages 20 and 96-97. · Please revise the prospectus to disclose in the Business section and briefly in the prospectus summary your strategy of focusing on countries with limited intellectual property regimes. Your revised disclosure should address why you believe that the potentially increased likelihood of infringement of your intellectual property right is sufficiently offset by benefits to you. In response to the Staff’s comment, the Company has added disclosure in the prospectus summary under “Risks Associated With Our Business” on page 5 and on pages 96-97. The marketing and distribution efforts..., page 19 8. Please expand your disclosure in response to prior comment 20 to include the expiration date and other material terms of these agreements. Revise here and in your business section as appropriate. Also, to the extent material, please file these agreements as exhibits. In response to the Staff’s comment, the Company has revised the disclosure on page 22 and added disclosure on page 98. In addition, the Company has filed with Amendment No. 3 the distribution agreement with Nanoteco as Exhibit 10.21, and will file by amendment the distribution agreement with Intematix as Exhibit 10.20. The reduction or elimination of government investment..., page 22 9. We note your response to prior comment 21. We note your revised disclosure here and your disclosure on page 82 under “Government Investments and Support for LEDs.” With a view to disclosure, please tell us whether you have disclosed the governments around the world that use policy initiatives to accelerate LED development and adoption. In response to the Staff’s comment, the Company has revised the disclosure on pages 25 and 85-86 regarding the government policies of certain countries in which the Company sells its products. The Company advises the Staff that it has not, however, attempted to identify all of the governments around the world that have passed policy initiatives to accelerate LED development and adoption. The Company has identified government policies in certain locations, such as China, Korea, the United States and the European Union, in which the Company has to date recorded, and is expected to in the future record, significant sales. If we fail to implement..., page 22 10. Please provide us with your analysis for your disclosure in response to prior comment 22 relating to the internal control requirement. The Company advises the Staff that the Company’s next filing of an amendment to the Registration Statement will include the audited consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2010 and the Company does not intend to complete this offering and become a public company until after it has included such financial statements. Item 308 of Regulation S-K requires a public company to include in its annual reports on Form 10-K management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting and an attestation report of the independent auditor on management’s assessment of the issuer’s internal control over financial reporting as of the end of the most recent fiscal year. Pursuant to the Instructions to Item 308, a company is not required to provide either a management assessment or an auditor attestation report until it has previously filed one annual report with the SEC. Assuming the Company becomes a public company in the next few months, as it currently contemplates, subject to Staff review and market conditions, the Company’s first annual report on Form 10-K will be for the year ending August 31, 2011 and the Company will not be required to include the management assessment or auditor attestation report. Instead, the Company is required to provide the management report and, subject to recent SEC rule-making in connection with Section 404(c) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act as added by Section 989G of the Dodd-Frank Act, may be required to provide the auditor attestation report beginning with its annual report on Form 10-K for the year ending August 31, 2012. We are a multinational organization..., page 26 11. We note your response to prior comment 23. Please reconcile your indication that there are no material tax consequences to investors with your disclosure in this risk factor regarding the uncertainty of the tax laws to which your multinational organization is subject, including the possibility of a material impact to you if taxing authorities claim that various withholding requirements apply to you or your subsidiaries or assert that the benefits of tax treaties are not available to you. In response to the Staff’s comment and its previous comment 11 in its September 2 letter, the Company has deleted the risk factor because it believes the risk factor was overly generic. The Company previously included this risk factor because of the uncertainty of certain tax laws that may be applicable to the Company and its subsidiaries in various jurisdictions around the world. However, the previous risk factor was not intended to suggest that the Company’s international operations would subject any direct additional taxes on the Company’s shareholders. The Company confirms that there are no tax matters or consequences contemplated by Item 601(b)(8) which would be material to investors that require the filing of a tax opinion. Use of Proceeds, page 42 12. We note your response to prior comment 26; however, it is unclear how omitting the approximate amounts to be used for each purpose complies with Item 504 of Regulation S-K. In addition, it is unclear how you considered Instruction 7 to Item 504 of Regulation S-K. We therefore reissue our comment. In response to the Staff’s comment, the Company has revised the disclosure on pages 7 and 45. The actual amounts will be added prior to circulating preliminary prospectuses. Management’s Discussion and Analysis..., page 50 Interest income (expense), net, page 56 13. Please note that we may have further comments after you file the exhibits mentioned in your response to prior comments 32 and 86, as well as the disclosure in response to prior comment 59. The Staff’s comment is duly noted. The Company has filed the Agreement for Issuance of Overseas Letter of Credit between E.SUN Commercial Bank and Taiwan SemiLEDs as Exhibit 10.17, and the Lease Agreement between Luxxon Technology Corporation and Semi-Photonics Co., Ltd. as Exhibit 10.19 to Amendment No. 3. 14. With regard to prior comment 32, please provide us with your analysis as to how you determined that your outstanding notes are not material and need not be filed. In response to the Staff’s comment, the Company has filed the Loan Agre