How it's legal for your company to respond to investors

Regulation FD (“Fair Disclosure”), adopted by the SEC in 2000, says a public company can't selectively share material non-public information with analysts or favored investors before telling the broad market. This is the real reason most companies go silent on message boards — they're not banned from speaking; they're afraid of selectively speaking.

The key phrase is material non-public information. Reg FD is about information that (a) would matter to a reasonable investor's trading decision and (b) hasn't been made public yet. Repeating what's already in your filings is not covered. The rule targets new, market-moving information shared narrowly.

In April 2013, the SEC issued guidance (following its review of a Netflix CEO Facebook post) confirming that social media can be a legitimate channel for public disclosure under Regulation FD — provided investors have been told, in advance, which channels the company uses to announce material information.

This is the legal foundation PubcoZone is built on. Once your company has notified investors that it discloses through, say, your X account and your company page, an announcement made there reaches everyone at once — which makes it broad public disclosure, not a selective tip. The SEC explicitly put company social media on the same footing as a press release or an 8-K, when used this way.

Putting Reg FD and the 2013 guidance together, a company can safely answer shareholders when both are true:

• The answer is broadly disseminated, not private. It goes out to everyone simultaneously through a declared channel — not whispered to one investor.
• The answer doesn't reveal new material non-public information. It draws on what's already in your public filings, or it's itself a proper simultaneous public disclosure.

Answer from the public record, broadcast to all, and you are on the same ground as issuing a press release.

PubcoZone doesn't decide what's compliant; you and your counsel do. What the platform does is give you the controls to run a careful disclosure process, and keep you in charge of every one of them:

• Citation-grounded drafts. When an investor asks a question, our AI drafts a reply using only your public filings. If a question looks like it would require non-public information, it's flagged for your review and the draft points to your official disclosures rather than answering — but you always decide what actually goes out.
• Simultaneous, broad publication. When you approve an answer, it publishes to your public page and your X account at the same moment — broad dissemination through your declared channels. That simultaneity is what the SEC's fair-disclosure standard looks for — broad, public dissemination rather than a selective response.
• A named human approves everything. Nothing is ever posted automatically. Your designated officer (CFO, IR head, or counsel) reviews and approves each answer before it goes out.
• A complete audit log. Every question, draft, approval, and publication is recorded — the report you can hand a regulator or exchange if they ever ask.

To rely on the 2013 guidance, your company should identify its disclosure channels in advance — typically a single sentence added to your investor-relations policy or a periodic filing, stating that the company may disclose material information through its website and designated social-media accounts, and directing investors to follow them. Your securities counsel will recognize this immediately; it's the standard step companies took after the Netflix guidance. PubcoZone's onboarding sets up your declared channels so this is straightforward.

PubcoZone is not a substitute for your securities counsel, and it does not certify that any post is legal — you and your counsel are responsible for what you approve. You should never use it to: predict your stock price, tell anyone to buy or sell, hype or promote, or share information that isn't public. Those aren't Reg FD issues — they're anti-fraud and anti-touting issues (including Section 17(b), the rule requiring paid promoters to disclose their compensation). Our first-pass filter flags that kind of language for your review — it's an assist, not a guarantee — and every post you approve carries the compensated-provider and forward-looking-statements disclosures you've set, attached automatically.