RE:market equity programArticle explaining ATM offerings.
Excerpts: ATM offerings can be advantageous to issuers because it allows them to raise capital directly in the market with no discount and to pay a fee that is generally lower than a standard brokered public offerings or private placements.
They allow an issuer to – at its discretion – instruct an agent or agents (generally an independent dealer(s)) to use commercially reasonable efforts to sell a certain amount of new equity securities of the issuer in the public markets for a period of time. The equity securities are sold at prevailing market prices at the time of sale....
The agent(s) for an ATM offering will typically receive a commission of two to three percent of the aggregate price of equity securities sold pursuant to the offering. The commission is generally substantially lower than the fees paid by issuers in a standard brokered public offerings or private placements.
For the duration of the ATM offering, an issuer is required to periodically disclose in its ongoing public disclosure documents and/or in reports, the number of equity securities and average price of the equity securities sold under the ATM offering, the gross and net proceeds received by the issuer and the agent’s commissions paid to the agent(s).
Re. the last point above, I believe that, unlike a plain vanilla equity raise, ATM offerings do not have to be reported at the time they are made. Instead, the company must make periodic disclosures about how many shares they issued over a given time period and the money it received for those shares - probably as part of their quarterly financial statements.