Revenue Based Finance

Revenue Based Finance

Revenue Based Finance are a category of contingent payment investment structures where the payment to the investor is contingent on the amount and timing of the issuers financial performance, typically measured by cash basis revenues. While, for reasons outlined below, it is most common to use revenue as the contingent payment source, some structures use other income statement or cash flow accounting entries. (See Demand Dividends as example) As a term of art, these structures are frequently considered to be part of Revenue Based Finance despite the use of a different accounting lines.

Reasons for Revenue Based Finance

Revenue Based Finance is often used as an technique for realizing an alternative exit when other financial Strucures are not likely to provide an exit to investors. Revenue Based Finance is also used to achieve Appropriate Capital to algin company performance with investor returns

Revenue Based Finance Structuring Options

The structures are typically designed to stop paying investors when the investor has received the negotiated target return. Typically, that negotiated return is expressed as a multiple of the initial investment.  For example, investors seeking a 3X return target that has invested $100,000 would receive their share of revenues until the investor has been paid $100,000 X 3 = $300,000. It’s important to note that the investors return on capital will depend on the timing of the payments – and thus will depend on the rate of revenue growth.   The same 3x return target will have a much better return on capital if the company has fast revenue growth compared to the same company if it experiences slower revenue growth.

Revenue Based Exits can either be set up as debt or equity structures depending on the local laws.  When using equity they are typically Redemption Based Exits in that the issuer is obligated to repurchase the equity from the investor at a specified premium.  In Revenue Based exit Structured as debt, the payments to the investor are treated as a mix of interest and principal payments.

Revenue Based Finance Structures

Demand Dividends

Demand Dividends are a structure created by Santa Clara University. Demand Dividends are contingent payment instruments that dedicated a percentage of free cash flow as the source of returns to investors.  Like Revenue Based Exits, they are typically designed to stop paying investors when the investor has received the negotiated target return.

Royalty Financing

Royalty Financing in Impact Investing repurposes the royalty payments from traditional finance to meet the needs of Impact Investors

In traditional finance, Royalties are a mechanism for paying for intellectual property.  Most legal jurisdictions have clear definition of royalties and their accounting treatment and definition may vary between legal jurisdictions.

Many impact investing structures would be significantly easier to classify as royalties as the accounting and tax rules for royalties are well defined and simple.   Royalties are only treated as income as the sales on which those royalties depend occur.  For example a book publisher will owe royalties to an author only when that author’s book sells.

Unfortunately many tax juridiscinos limit the use of royalty accounting to their traditional use as payments for intellectual property.   For example, in many jurisdictions a Revenue Financing structure cant simply be called a Royalty Structure with the hope that the accounting will be as simple as royalty accounting.  This is because doing so would facilitate tax avoidance structures in traditionally busessiness.

Redemption Based Exits

Redemption Based Exists re typically equity structures where the investment structure requires the company to redeem (repurchase) the equity shares from the investors.  The terms of repurchase agreements vary between structures but generally include a method for the investors to, over the life of the security, receive a specified multiple of their original investment as the premium paid for the redemptions.

Examples include Indie.vc

Hybrid Strucures

Hybrid Revenue Based Finance Strucures typically provide investor returns by a mix of redemptions with another payment stream like interest payments or dividend payments.   Examples of hybrid structures include Performance Aligned Stock

Key Considerations for Deal Structuring

Legal and Accounting Considerations

Complexity

Complexity is an important consideration when seeking the most appropriate capital for a company.  If the needs for capital are appropriately met with traditional structures then using traditional structures will likely reduce transaction costs and investor reticence.

Many of the alternative exit structures are new, are not well understood by many practitioners, and have less clarity about their tax, accounting, and legal merits than traditional exits.  These complexities can add costs and slow the transaction process.

Equity vs Debt

It’s important to understand that just because a security is labeled as “equity” or “debt” does not mean that the local tax authorities will accept that label.  It is common for tax authorities to have procedures to reclassify securities based on their economic structures.  Any reclassification could significantly change the economics of the security and/or increase the difficulty of accounting and other compliance elements.

We recommend any investor or entrepreneur seeking to use an alternate exit structure seek professional advice on the tax implications with a specific focus on reclassification risk.

Usury Laws

When an alternative exit uses a debt structure or a structure that could be reclassified as debt issuers must be careful that the nature of the contingent payments don’t violate local usury laws.  Usury laws are laws that set a maximum interest rate on debt payments.

What is interest vs principal?

When an issuer pays an investor some return on a debt structure it needs to be clear to both parties what portion of the payment is interest and what portion is principal.  This distinction is important because generally the return of principal is not taxed but the interest is subject to taxation.

Traditional investment structures calculate the principal and interest portions of a payment using near-universally accepted amortization tables.  With many alternative exit debt structures it is not clear how to create an amortization table that is accepted by the local tax authorities.

For example, consider a debt based alternative exit where the source of returns is a fixed percentage of revenues until the investor receives 3 (three) times their initial investment (a revenue based contingent payment).  If the investor invested $100,000 then when the transaction has completed its duration the investor will have received $300,000 in payments of which $100,000 has to be treated as return of principle and $200,000 has to be treated as interest..  If the first payment is $10,000 – what portion of that is principal and what is interest?  It might make sense to call ⅓ principal and ⅔ interest.  It also might make sense to call the entire $100,000 of payments principal and then all the rest interest.

While it is possible that your local tax jurisdiction will not have clear rules, it is more likely that they do have rules for properly apportioning principle and interest because not having those rules would have made it easy for investors to take advantage of their absence and create investment structures that are intended to delay, defer or avoid taxes.

Complicated accounting requirements

Some tax jurisdictions solve the above referenced question of apportioning interest and principle by imposing complicated tax accounting methods that can be burdensome to administer and may even create tax disadvantages to the investor.

For example, in the United States the law (26 CFR § 1.1275-4) reqires contingent payments instruments to be treated as if they were not in fact contingent using the Noncontingent bond method. In addition to the added complication, this often has the negative consequence of requiring, in the early years of an investment, the investor to pay tax on income they will not receive until the later years of the investment.

Distribution rules (eg re dividends and Board approval)

Local lay may have rules that need to be carefully considered when using equity instruments for alternative exits, especially when using a dividend as part of the structure.  Traditionally dividends may need to be authorized by the board and their may be restrictions on payment if the issuer does not have retained earnings.

Downside Protection

Traditional investment structures have clause for when the investment does not perform or when the company is forced to restructure or close.  The order in which creditors and investors get repaid in those cases is one of the negotiable features of term sheets but is generally based on the overall structure of the transaction with debt having higher preference than equity.  To the extent that an alternative exit has an economic structure that is different than its legal structure (eg a debt based exit that offers equity returns) the parties need to consider the appropriate downside protection.

Considerations by Legal Jurisdiction

The key questions that you need to ask to figure out what exit structures work in a given local legal system:

  • Do the tax authorities have rules for reclassifying debt as equity (or vice versa) – that is, is it possible that designing a debt instrument that pays variable payments (eg revenue based) would be reclassified as equity
    • if those rules exist you may need to create an equity structure
    • if those rules don’t exist then,
      • how are contingent payment debt securities taxed and accounted for.
        • how is each payment split between the return of principle vs interest? (need to know for investor and issuer – may not be the same)
        • are there rules that force contingent payment debt instruments to be accounted for in a way that may create phantom tax (in the US, for example, you have to act as if the payments were non contingent and create an amortization schedule and make tax payments based on that schedule – not just on what each payment ends up being)
    • Could designing an equity structure with mandatory redemptions be reclassified as debt
      • if yes this loops back to the questions re debt payments above
      • if no then equity with mandatory redemption contingent on (revenue %) is an easy option

Example Term Sheets


Additional Resources

Emergence of New Capital Providers – Exploring Alternatives to Traditional Expectations and Structures

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Capital Access Lab (CAL) is a national pilot initiative that aims to find, promote, and scale innovative investment managers who are providing new kinds of capital to underserved entrepreneurs and communities in the United States.

In July 2020, the Capital Access Lab announced its investments in 5 funds investing in underserved entrepreneurs through innovative investment structures: 1863 Ventures, Anzu Partners, Capacity Capital, Collab Capital, and Indie.vc. During the selection process of these 5 funds, the Capital Access Lab identified over 100 funds focused on underserved entrepreneurs. This report analyzes the approach of a subset of 20 funds that responded to our survey.

Through our analysis, we learned that funds investing in underserved entrepreneurs through alternative investment structures are often nimble investment vehicles that operate in the very early stages of the portfolio companies’ development, really enabling these companies to raise the first essential capital to fuel their growth. They do not invest exclusively in high growth sectors like traditional VCs; our study shows that they are often sector agnostic and have a wide range of return expectations and initial criteria for the investment that are much more flexible than what we typically see in traditional venture capital.

Whereas these funds face challenges related to covering the structural and operational costs of running an investment fund with relatively low Asset Under Management, they represent a nascent and very targeted approach to serving underserved entrepreneurs. Through this report, we hope to highlight their work, support their growth, and inspire potential funders and donors to invest in them. 

BACKGROUND

The Toniic Institute, through the Impact Terms Platform, developed this report about the work of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Capital Access Lab on investment funds adopting alternative investment instruments.  The Capital Access Lab is designed to provide risk capital to new investment models that do not resemble traditional venture capital or lending, spurring the formation of new financing mechanisms that increase capital investment to underserved entrepreneurs who have been historically left behind due to their race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic class, and/or geographic location.

The objective of this report is to review the lessons learned from the Capital Access Lab’s work and to share innovative ways investors can invest in entrepreneurs who are underserved by venture capital and traditional lending structures. Our goal is to describe emerging approaches to investments, liquidity, and risk/return profiles that can be more inclusive for entrepreneurs. 

The Capital Access Lab (CAL), formed in 2019, is a national pilot initiative that aims to find, promote, and scale innovative investment managers who are providing new kinds of capital to underserved entrepreneurs and communities in the United States.  The Capital Access Lab was created to help address this capital gap by creating a new vehicle to invest in alternative capital funds survive those entrepreneurs  That same year, the Lab’s lead investor and sponsor, the Kauffman Foundation, released a report, titled “Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs: Removing Barriers”, which observed that a surprisingly high percentage of entrepreneurs – more than 83% – do not access bank loans or venture capital. 

To source prospective funds, the Capital Access Lab created an online application process through which funds or proposed funds could apply for consideration for funding.  The CAL did not widely publicize the announcement of this opportunity and instead relied primarily on word of mouth and limited media. When the fund application was announced, responses far exceeded their expectation.  CAL had expected 20 to 40 funds to apply in the first year but ended up receiving close to 150 applications.  Of those, over 100 fit the requirements for application.  “One of the most positive signals to us – [was that] the submissions were mostly first-time fund managers and aspiring investors wanting to bring capital to their community” said John Tyler, Kauffman Foundation General Counsel. The CAL team was also encouraged and surprised by the diversity of the applicants.  Roughly 55% of applicants were women and 50% persons of color.  The large and diverse application pool reveals a significant demand for and interest in alternative capital structures.

The CAL had expected that many of the applicants would be larger funds that saw alternative capital structures as an additional opportunity. (Traditionally it is difficult for funds smaller than $10 million in assets to generate enough fees to cover their overhead.) Unexpectedly, the applicant pool included many smaller funds that would have traditionally been considered too small to rely only on traditional management fees, but instead many funds were a part of related organizations that could support the overhead.  These related organizations included nonprofit business accelerators, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), and other organizations that wanted to bring investment capital to their communities. For example, 1863 Ventures, one of the funds that received investment, already had an active business development program and wanted to start an investment fund as a means of furthering its mission.  

During their due diligence process, the Capital Access Lab identified over 100 funds focused on underserved entrepreneurs, eventually selecting five: 1863 Ventures, Anzu Partners, Capacity Capital, Collab Capital, and Indie.vc. 

The Capital Access Lab includes as one of its initiatives, the Capital Access Lab Fund which is a donor advised fund housed at Impact Assets. That fund was capitalized by the Kaufman Foundation. The Capital Access Lab Fund, and a separate funding source from Rockefeller foundation, have invested in the five funds that were selected by The Capital Access Lab. 

To ensure the preservation of a recognized charitable purpose under Section 501(c)(3), the Kauffman Foundation developed a charitability term sheet which it has made publicly available as an example of how a foundation structured a particular investment to further its charitable mission and ensure accountability thereto.

Although CAL could not invest in all the funds, they recognized there was a lot to learn and share about their innovative investment structures. This report analyses the approach of a subset of 20 funds who responded to our survey.  

RESEARCH – RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

Toniic and the Impact Terms Platform conducted research for this study using a combination of interviews with the principals and a formal survey.  The survey participants consist of funds that had applied to the Capital Access Lab during their initial funding period. Twenty funds participated in the survey. The data below highlights some key takeaways from our review.

FUND CHARACTERISTICS

TARGET FUND SIZE

Fifty percent of survey respondents reported a target fund size of less than $10 million.  

This target size is consistent with the population of over 100 applicants who applied for funding from CAL – as 50% of those applicants also reported a target size under $10 million. If these funds were to use the traditional VC fee structure that means that they would expect to receive under $200,000 per year in management fees to cover management costs. These low fees are generally considered below the viable amount required by a fund management team without external middle and back office support.

INVESTMENT STAGE

Ninety five percent of participants report that they will invest in seed or pre-seed stage companies. Of those participants, 55% said they would also invest in Series A investments, leaving 45% who only target seed or pre seed stage investing. Only one fund participant would not invest in seed or pre seed stage companies targeting only post seed investments. 

TARGET INVESTMENT SIZE

Consistent with the small average target fund size and largely seed stage investing, 65% of the participants expect to invest less than $300,000 per investment. Only 10% of respondents would invest more than $500,000.

TARGET SECTORS

45% of the respondents have indicated that they are sector agnostic, and 25% of the respondents (among the open-ended responses) included Food and Agriculture as one of their funds’ focus areas.

While traditional VC funds often target high growth sectors such as IT, Health Care, Financials, Telecommunication, the survey respondents did not indicate a strong tendency towards these sectors.  

FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS USED

The following section analyses the financial instruments used by these funds to invest in underserved entrepreneurs. The classification process of these alternative investment structures is a challenging process  because there is not an agreed-upon vocabulary for many of the emerging investment structures, nor agreement about whether they should be broadly classified as equity or debt.  For example, respondents may have differing opinions about if the Demand Dividend Structure should be debt or equity, so we asked about that structure as both debt and equity then combined them when appropriate to our analysis.

COMMON FEATURES OF ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENT STRUCTURES BASED ON CONTINGENT PAYMENTS

To structure these investments, investors typically start with a target IRR, make a range of estimates of the company’s future performance, and then structure the other terms and features of the investments, including the repayment terms such as the percent of revenues and return multiple cap to achieve that target IRR.

The survey asked a series of questions about the details of the alternative investing structures used by that participant.  The questions were designed to get further details around what we anticipated would be the most common structures used: a variation of contingent payment structures.  Seventy-five percent of the respondents reported using some form of alternative investment structure based on contingent payments (revenue-based debt, redeemable equity, or Demand Dividends).  

These structures are flexible and can be designed to include a variety of features. The core feature of these structures is that they are contingent on something like the amount and timing of the portfolio companies’ revenues.  Therefore, the return to the investor will vary based on the features of the investment and the financial performance of the company. 

Basis of calculation

Of the 75% participants that stated they will or do use a form of contingent payment structure – 40% said they would invest using gross cash receipts as a basis of calculation, and 47% reported they would invest using net cash receipts.  Thirteen percent reported they would use either gross or net cash receipts. Demand Dividend structures did not seem to affect this ratio, even though Demand Dividends typically use net cash receipts as a basis of calculation.

Return Expectations

Respondents reported a wide range of target IRR for their investments ranging from 2% to 35% and averaging 15%. We did not specify if we were asking for the target IRR for the fund or individual investment, but we believe that most participants were answering at the fund level.

Minimum annual revenue required for investment

Respondents reported a wide range of minimum required revenues for the investees ranging from under $50,000 per year to over $5 million per year.  The median required revenues was $300,000-$400,000 per year.

Minimum annual revenue growth rate

Respondents reported a median required forecast annual revenue growth of 20-30% with only 16% requiring revenue growth of more than 40%.  This differs significantly from the kind of minimum revenue growth requirements you would see from traditional VC.

Half of those who are making revenue based (or similar) finance structures are investing in seed or pre-seed, and will invest into forecast revenue growth below 30%.  These characteristics are not common in traditional venture capital so this demonstrates the growth of new sources of capital, that are willing to invest with non-traditional approaches.

Minimum gross margin of target companies

Considering the role that revenues play in the calculation of repayment, we also asked about the minimum required gross margin in order to repay the investment. Respondents reported a minimum median target gross margin of 30-40%. At Impact Terms, our  expectation was that lower reported minimum revenue growth rate targets would result in higher the margin requirements.  We had this expectation because for an investor to receive a target return of X% on an investment in a lower growth company, that company typically must be able to support a higher percentage of cash flow paid to the investor which requires higher gross margins.

The opposite was the case, as it turned out. The funds that were willing to take the lowest forecast revenue growth in seed stage companies were also willing to take the lowest gross margins. Like the wide range in target IRR, this demonstrates that there is a much wider range of return expectations and minimum requirements than we see in traditional venture capital.  One possible explanation is that the funds accepting lower gross margins for lower revenue growth companies are doing so as part of a strategy to provide the appropriate capital to the entrepreneurs.  That is, the entrepreneurs they are targeting may simply not have higher revenue growth and margins so the funds used alternative investment structures with return features that the companies could afford.

Percentage of revenue used to repay the investment

Thirty-three percent of respondents indicated that their average percentage of revenues used to repay the investment is 5%, and overall 66.6% indicated an average percentage of revenues lower than 10%. This is typically repaid by the portfolio companies monthly or quarterly out of minimum targeted gross margins of 30-40%.

Forms response chart. Question title: How much is the typical percentage of revenues used?. Number of responses: 12 responses.
Average return multiple cap

Thirteen participants use an average return cap – meaning the average cash-on-cash multiple of the invested capital to be returned to the investor over the life of the investment.  The industry average return cap is generally between 2x and 3x the initial invested amount. As an example – a cap of 3x on a $100,000 investment would mean the investment is complete when a total of $300,000 has been repaid.  This is a common structuring feature of alternative investments that are based on revenue, cash flows or similar contingent payments.  The total IRR of that investment would depend on the time it takes for repayment as well as the cap, so a 3x cap investment that takes 10 years to pay out would have a lower IRR than a 3x cap investment that takes 5 years to pay out.

REVIEW AND CONCLUSIONS

It is clear both from the large number of applicants for Capital Access Lab funding and from the follow up research we conducted that there is a significant and underserved ecosystem of small funds that are leveraging alternative investment structures to invest in companies focused on underserved populations.  Many of the funds are sector agnostic and not many are targeting traditional venture sectors like IT, Health Care, Financials, Telecommunications.  It is also evident from the wide range of return expectations and the combination of investment structuring features that the funds are willing to invest beyond what we would expect from traditional VCs and that therefore that the funds in the survey can  serve entrepreneurs who fall outside of traditional VC requirements.  

These funds are nimble investment vehicles that operate in the very early stages, potentially being the first professional investors supporting companies in their infancy, effectively de-risking and capitalizing early-stage entrepreneurs.

They also have a wide range of return expectations, including repayment multiples, and initial criteria for the investment that are much more flexible than what we typically see in traditional venture capital.  It has long been a complaint that sources of capital are too fixated on structures designed only for companies with explosive growth, so it is encouraging that this research shows an emergence of new capital providers exploring alternatives to traditional expectations and structures.

Out of the 100 funds that applied to the Capital Access Lab, and more specifically out of the 20 survey respondents, we have observed that about 50% of the funds have a target raise of less than $10 million and 75% of less than $30 million; that 95% invest in seed stage, and about ~50% in pre-seed and Series A; and that 65% target an initial investment of less than $300,000 per investment.   

Toniic, the global action community for impact investing, has also identified the emergence of relatively small and nimble funds (less than 15M in target AUM) leveraging alternative investment structures to address the needs of underserved populations across different investment themes. These includes funds providing loans to farmers to be repaid through a revenue share agreement in order to allow time to the farmers to switch to organic and regenerative agriculture practices and align their cash flows from higher quality produce with the loan repayment, funds providing capital to minority owned businesses in geographies out of the radar of major venture capitalists to facilitate exits, but also funds providing loans to underserved students that can repay their loans only when they start generating income from actual employment. 

While this did not apply to the five funds selected for investment by the Capital Access Lab, these smaller funds are much smaller than typical venture capital fund and CDFI, so small in fact that many are unlikely to cover their operating costs as a fund, and instead use the fund as an addition to existing community service programs.  These funds primarily target seed stage companies and are using a wide range of alternative investment structures.  

In order to support these experimental but smaller funds, it is clearly important to find ways to lower their operating costs.  As noted in this review, important costs like legal, including the added costs associated with using new investing and organization structures, insurance and fund administration are high for these funds.  It can even be difficult to find fund administration services that will support alternative investment structures.  Companies like AngelList are starting to provide some of these services at lower cost but they are still expensive for small funds and they do not offer services to most alternative investment structures. Investors and foundations who wish to support these funds might consider funding start-ups that help provide these services at lower cost to smaller funds.

Agnes Dasewicz, Lead, Capital Access Lab observed that, alternatively, it would be worth evaluating if investments coming from foundations could, when legally allowed, be accompanied by separate resources and donations to cover some administrative expenses and technical assistance.  This is fairly common practice with large international funds who often have sidecar vehicles for technical assistance, and we agree that sidecar grants would help further the ability of small funds to continue to innovate.  

Contingent Payment Structures

Contingent Payment Structures are the most common form of Alternative Exits. Unlike a traditional note or loan, the time and/or payment amounts made by these structures are contingent on some other factor like company revenues.

Royalties are a special case of contingent payments as the payment of royalty is contingent on events that trigger a royalty payment, typically the use of intellectually properly. While Royalties are contingent payments the converse is not true and not all contingent payments are royalties. This distinction is important in countries like the United States that have different tax treatment for royalties than other forms of contingent payment.

Case study: convertible revenue loan for green cleaning product

A Latin American company produces and distributes green household cleaning products. Investors have funded the company with a convertible loan that is repaid monthly through a percentage of revenues as opposed to fixed interest payments, allowing the company more flexibility for growth than with traditional debt.

The company had limited sales and marginal EBITDA, which made valuation challenging, so the investor designed a tailored senior convertible loan that would be paid back through an escalating percentage of sales.

Target IRR: 20-25%

Type of investment: Senior convertible loan to a non-US-based enterprise

Investor: An impact investment fund focused on supporting the early growth of social and environmental companies in Latin America. It invests in a wide range of sectors, such as education, sustainable consumer products, health, housing, organics and clean energy. It seeks to tailor its transaction structures to the needs of each portfolio company.

Company: A producer and distributor of 100% non-toxic and biodegradable household cleaning products. Company is generating revenues and is cash flow positive.

Key innovations

Revenue-based loan: The company’s total loan obligation is fixed, and repayments are determined as a share of revenue, escalating over time until the entire obligation is repaid.

Conversion option for investors, at investor discretion: The loan may convert into equity at a pre-determined multiple of trailing revenue or EBITDA, at the discretion of investors.

Key terms

Investment amount: The investment was broken down into two tranches: (1) US$300k immediately, and (2) US$150k after 12 months, contingent on reaching predefined operating and financial milestones.

Repayment timeline: The target term is 5 years, with an 18-month grace period for both principal and interest.

Revenue share rate and repayment cap: After the grace period, the company pays an initial 3% to a maximum of 9% of revenues (escalating over 3.5 years) until the investor receives a total of 2.3x its original investment.

Conversion option: Convertibility provision allows the investor to convert into equity at its own discretion and at a valuation equal to the higher of 1x TTM sales or 5x TTM EBITDA. At the time of conversion, the investor can only convert the balance of the total obligation still owed calculated at 2.3x the total loan provided, less any loan repayments made up to that date. Conversion is only allowed after an initial 18-month lock up period.

Governance: The investor assumes one Board seat and has veto right over a number of pre-defined “Major Decisions”, including new share issuance, new debt issuance, CAPEX and budget decisions.

Special considerations

Tax considerations: The local tax regime does not have any special treatment for flexible debt schedules, so not a concern for the issuer in this case. For a U.S. lender, “original issue discount” tax implications could be significant given the grace period, variable nature of payments, and lack of”original issue discount” reporting by the company.

More detailed deal rationale and context:

  1. Company has to be close to profitable or already profitable, so that it can service debt at a % of revenue after about 12-18 months.
  2. Margins need to be strong, if investors are to take up to 9% of revenues by year 5.
  3. Company should not have significant prior debt.
  4. Company should not expect to have a large need for additional equity/debt requirements during the term of the investment.
  5. Structure appealed to investor over equity because it would allow the company to grow and thrive over the longer term without needing to be acquired in the short to medium term to provide a liquidity event, for two reasons: (1) It was not obvious that the company would appeal to a strategic buyer within the life of the fund, and (2) The investor was concerned that sale to a strategic buyer could compromise its mission.
  6. The structure also appealed to the company because the founders liked its equity-like alignment of incentives (the faster the company grows, the higher the IRR for the investor), however they got to retain more ownership than they would have under an equity deal and the investor’s returns are capped.
  7. Local business environment: local founders are often comfortable with the idea of building a company for the long-term, with potential generational succession plan. Therefore, the idea that they wouldn’t be acquired in the next 5-7 years was not off-putting.

Case study: lump sum redemption option for emerging market mobile tech co.

An emerging market technology company provides services via mobile phones. The entrepreneur is confident in an acquisition opportunity, but investors wanted an alternative liquidity provision because acquisition has been uncommon for African tech companies in the social sector. The deal includes a provision for the company to redeem investor-owned equity at investor discretion after 7 years, mirroring a traditional “liquidity event” payout.

Investors did not want to rely solely on an exit via sale or IPO. At the same time, both founders and investors wanted to maximize cash spent on operations to catalyze growth, as opposed to servicing debt or revenue share payments. In addition, the founders believed that an equity investment would be more attractive to subsequent institutional capital.

Target IRR: > 15%

Investment type: Redeemable preferred equity

Company: The company supplies information content in emerging markets that is accessible from mobile phones and tablets. The company has revenue and initial signs of direct-to-consumer and channel uptake. There is no established market, however, for the product, and no history of M&A in the sector and region where the company operates.

Investor: The investor group is led by a foundation that invests in early stage emerging market companies. The lead investor seeks a reasonable return, with an emphasis on supporting high risk/high impact companies.

Key Innovation

Redemption exit option: Conventionally, redemption provisions are used as downside protection and with the expectation that they are likely to have little practical use. Here, investors believe that redemption is just as likely—if not more likely—than a traditional exit by sale or IPO. The deal is structured to provide an attractive financial return through redemption after 7 years in a transaction that resembles an acquisition from the investor’s perspective.

Key Terms

Valuation: Total raise of $500,000 at $2 million pre-money valuation.

Legal structure: The terms are structured to closely approximate standard U.S. “Seed” preferred equity investment model (except for the redemption provision, which is not standard in U.S. Seed Preferred model).

“Lump sum” redemption: Investors can elect to redeem all or a portion of their shares at any time after 7 years. The right to redeem is individual, rather than based on the affirmative election of a minimum percentage of shares as is often seen in redemption provisions.

Redemption price: The redemption price equals the greater of (1) the equivalent of a 15% per year return and (2) the fair market value of the preferred stock at the time of redemption, as established by an independent valuation.

Redemption payment: The Company may elect to pay the redemption consideration over a two-year period, but subject to 8% interest during that period.

Special Considerations

Tax Consideration: The redemption option raises a question of whether the instrument could be characterized as debt for tax purposes, but such re-characterization is unlikely given the minimum 7-year term and option to redeem only a portion of the shares. Furthermore, other deal-specific factors support equity characterization (e.g., otherwise “thin” capitalization). See “original issue discount” details for more detail on potential tax issues.

“Lump sum” redemption considerations: The big question with this type of “balloon” redemption provision is what happens if the company does not have adequate resources to redeem the stock at the time of the election date. A few notes on this point:

  1. Investors should analyze the company’s projected cash flow and consider the likelihood that the company will be able to generate sufficient cash to redeem the stock.
  2. Investors and company may need to work together to modify the redemption payout in order to balance the company’s and investor’s cash needs.
  3. The company may have negotiating leverage in a scenario in which cash is constrained, depending on the governing laws for the company and investment agreement. For example, even with a mandatory redemption provision in the certificate of incorporation, Delaware law prohibits companies from redeeming stock if the redemption would leave the company insolvent.
  4. The company and investors may also want to evaluate the ability to finance the redemption through debt or through a later stage equity investment.

Case study: Performance Aligned Stock: Tax efficient investor returns from revenue pool

Target IRR: Varies but generally between equity and debt returns

Investment type: Performance Aligned Stock

History:  Ron Boehm is an experienced social investor whose investments include a pool of social investments.  He was seeking an investment model that would provide him the ability to get timely returns without the need for the social entrepreneur to exit by sale or other traditional exit, which are less common in social enterprise.   He viewed debt as too inflexible and inappropriate for many of his potential investments, especially the early stage investments.

Mr Boehm began exploring investment models using returns that were contingent based on the timing of revenues.  These models assigned a percentage of revenues to investor returns. While there were a variety of existing versions of these models, under US tax law they created negative tax considerations as the investments would be subject to 26 CFR 1.1275-4 – Contingent Payment Debt Instruments, and thus require the Noncontingent Bond Method (“NBM”) of accounting.  The NBM accounting method when applied to early stage companies made it likely that investors would have to pay income taxes before they received income from the company as the accounting method requires the investor to recognize yet unrealized income similar to Original Issue Discount bonds.

Mr Boehm and investor Andy Lower joined efforts with John Berger, a social entrepreneur with a background in investment structuring, to create a structure that would allow contingent revenue based payments without  triggering 26 CFR 1.1275-4. They engaged the law firm of Womble Bond Dickinson to implement the new structure.

Key Innovation

Mixture of Redeemable Preferred Stock and Preferred Dividends.   

The returns to the investor using the  Performance Aligned Stock structure are derived from a percentage of company revenues that are allocated to a mix of prefered dividends and redemptions.   When a company issues Performance Aligned shares the company is committing to used a fixed percentage of its revenues to return capital to the investor via a pre-set ratio of dividends and share redemptions.

At the end of each quarter the company

  1. Calculates the Dividend and Redemption Pool (D&R Pool) – typically 2-8% of cash basis revenue.
  2. Uses the Dividend Portion of the D&R Pool to pay a dividend to all remaining shareholders
  3. Uses the Redemption Portion of the Return Pool to redeem shares.

The Dividend and Redemption Portions are pre-set ratios.  Combined they return a set maximum dollar return to the investors by the time all the securities are redeemed.  For example, if the investors are to receive a 300% return by the time all the shares are redeemed, they would set the Dividend Portion at ⅔ and the Redemption Portion at ⅓.   (Note: IRR will be less than the Target Cash Return due to time value of money)

Target Total Cash Return is mathematically related to the redemption ratio.  The REDEMPTION Portion = 100% / Target Total Cash Return%. The Dividend Portion = 1 – (REDEMPTION Portion)

Target Total Cash ReturnREDEMPTIONDividend
150%67%33%
200%50%50%
300%33%67%

The terms should be structured so that for the agreed revenue projections the investor will have all of their shares redeemed within 5-8 years, meeting the investor’s target IRR.

The investor is still taking an equity-like risk because in the event the company revenues grow slower than forecast, the investor’s IRR declines due to the slower pace of redemptions.  However, the investors can convert their unredeemed preferred shares to common shares at any time.

ACCOUNTING/TAX TREATMENT

Investors who purchase Performance Aligned shares issued by a corporation should be able to treat each redemption as a combination of a return of basis and a dividend.  If the issuer has retained earnings greater than the redemption, then par value of the stock is treated as return of basis and the premium is treated as a dividend. If the issuer does not have sufficient retained earnings (which could happen in the early years in some startups) then the par value and redemption premium are both treated as a return of basis.  

Even though the security is a preferred stock, the issuer may need to follow FASB 150 “Accounting for Certain Financial Instruments with Characteristics of both Liabilities and Equity”.  This rule requires the issuer to record the security as a liability on their balance sheet.

SAMPLE TERM SHEET

Performance Aligned Stock Term Sheet