Item 9A. - Controls and Procedures
9K characters. Original on sec.gov ·
Item 9A. - Controls and Procedures
Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures
Our management, with the participation of our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, has evaluated the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures as of June 30, 2020. The term "disclosure controls and procedures," as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15(d)-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"), means controls and other procedures of a company that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by a company in the reports it files or submits under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported, within the time periods specified in the SEC's rules and forms. Disclosure controls and procedures include, without limitation, controls and procedures designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by a company in the reports that it files or submits under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to our management, including its principal executive and financial officers, as appropriate, to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure. Management recognizes that any controls and procedures, no matter how well designed, and operated, can provide only reasonable assurance of achieving their objectives and management necessarily applies its judgement in evaluating the cost-benefit relationship of possible controls and procedures. Based on this evaluation, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer have concluded that the Company's disclosure controls and procedures were not effective as of June 30, 2020 due to a material weakness in internal control over financial reporting that was identified in our prospectus filed with the SEC on March 25, 2019 and is still being remediated, as described below.
Management's Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting
Our management is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting. Internal control over financial reporting is defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) under the Exchange Act. Our internal control over financial reporting is designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Our management evaluated the design and operating effectiveness of the Company's internal control over financial reporting based on the criteria established in the Internal Control-Integrated Framework (2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (the "COSO framework" (2013)).
Our internal control over financial reporting includes policies and procedures that:
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pertain to the maintenance of records that in reasonable detail accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of the Company;
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provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP, and that our receipts and expenditures are being made only in
accordance with management and directors of the Company's authorization; and
- provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use or
disposition of the Company's assets that could have a material effect on the financial statements.
A material weakness is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of the annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. All internal control systems, no matter how well designed, have inherent limitations. Accordingly, even effective internal controls and procedures can provide only reasonable assurance with respect to financial statement preparation and presentation.
As previously described in Part II, Item 9A of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019, we identified a material weakness arising from deficiencies in the design and operating effectiveness of internal controls over the period end reporting process. Specifically, we did not design and maintain effective controls to verify that conflicting duties were appropriately segregated within key IT systems used in the preparation and reporting of financial information. This control deficiency did not result in a misstatement of our consolidated financial statements. However, the control deficiency could have resulted in misstatements of our interim or annual consolidated financial statements and disclosures that may have not been prevented or detected on a timely basis.
Under the supervision and with the participation of our management, including our Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, we conducted an evaluation of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as of June 30, 2020. Based on this evaluation, our management concluded that we did not maintain effective internal control over financial reporting as of June 30, 2020 given a previously identified material weakness had not been remediated as of fiscal 2020 year end.
The effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as of June 30, 2020, has been audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers AG, an independent registered public accounting firm, as stated in their report, which appears on "Item 8. - Financial Statements and Supplementary Data" of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Plan for Remediation of Material Weakness
We are currently in the process of remediating the material weakness related to deficiencies in the design and operating effectiveness of internal controls over period end reporting through a process to (i) develop and implement additional controls and procedures to reduce the number of segregation of duties conflicts within key IT systems, which includes the implementation of new security roles and the automation of segregation of duties monitoring where practical, (ii) design and implement additional compensating controls where necessary and (iii) develop training on segregation of duties. Given we operate many ERP systems globally, this effort has targeted the largest locations with standardized systems in fiscal 2020 and will be expanded to other locations in fiscal 2021. These enhanced processes, including the implementation of new mitigating controls, will effectively remediate the material weakness, but the material weakness will not be considered remediated until the revised controls operate for a sufficient period of time and we have concluded, through testing, they are designed and operating effectively. We currently expect that the remediation of this material weakness will be completed by the end of fiscal 2021. However, there is no assurance that the material weakness will be fully remediated by the end of fiscal 2021 as the severity and length of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus ("COVID-19") pandemic is unknown and the remediation timeline could be negatively impacted because of inefficiencies caused by COVID-19 limitations on travel, meetings and on-site work.
Completed Remediation of Previously Reported Material Weakness
As previously described in Part II, Item 9A of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019, we identified a material weakness related to a lack of experience in technical accounting in U.S. GAAP and U.S. domestic registrant filing requirements. Since the material weakness has been identified, we have taken numerous steps to address the underlying causes and to remediate the material weakness. We have hired additional financial reporting personnel with U.S. GAAP technical accounting and financial reporting experience, as well as U.S. domestic registrant filing experience, aligned our accounting policies and procedures with U.S. GAAP, enhanced our internal review procedures during the financial close process with U.S. GAAP experienced staff, and have conducted technical training for accounting and finance personnel. During our fourth fiscal quarter of 2020, we completed our testing of the operating effectiveness of the implemented steps and found them to be effective. As a result, we have concluded the material weakness has been remediated as of June 30, 2020.
Changes in Internal Control Over Financial Reporting
Except as described above, there were no changes in our internal control over financial reporting (as defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) under the Exchange Act) that occurred during the fourth fiscal quarter of 2020 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.
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