Given the circumstances surrounding Bavi and the end of September?The below is quite possible as an internal move
Does the law require a quiet period before every quarterly earnings announcement from public companies?
This is a difficult question to answer with a clear bright-line rule. The general answer here is "no", but for the reasons discussed below one has to think about this question very carefully. The question often results from confusing "quiet period" and "quarterly blackout period". If one only thinks about "quiet period" applying during an offering, one would almost certainly conclude that if there is no offering, there is no quiet period restriction, and thus no requirement for any sort of "blackout period" period prior to quarterly earnings announcements.
However, the law in this area, around quarterly earnings announcements for public companies, has much more to do with other anti-fraud oriented securities laws than "quiet period" rules we’ve discussed above; and it’s a very fact-intensive area. The basic issue presented to a company is this: As a company comes to the end of a quarter, it gets increasing visibility on its results for that quarter, arguably the single most material piece of information about the company at that particular moment in its stock trading life (each quarter). And most companies are not prepared to announce their results for a period of time following the end of a given quarter, as they need to close their books for the quarter, ensure the proper reviews have occurred with respect to same, and then prepare the public announcement of those results. As a result, during that preparation time, there can be a lot of market anxiety about how the company performed during the most recent quarter. Many companies therefore impose a "quarterly blackout period" on PR activities (as well as stock trading by company board members and executives), as they do not want to make announcements during that period, prior to their earnings release, based on a legitimate fear that the market may react strongly to the non-earnings announcement (up OR down), and then days later when the earnings release comes out (which is very likely to cause the stock price to move up or down), the stock may move the opposite direction. And someone may then accuse management of trying to manipulate the stock price for selfish reasons. The classic illustration of that situation is as follows:
