"Sharps is a relatively small company and the dedicated employees mobilized in a time of great uncertainty and risk, to play a vital role in the safe collection and disposal of COVID-19 related medical waste," the spokesman said. "This loan played an important role in enabling Sharps to confidently execute against this plan, protect employees and help customers as they contended with the pandemic." For example, Sharps’ stock market value was about $100 million when it got the PPP loan, and shortly after it was forgiven, the company raised $17 million by issuing new shares, regulatory records show. Some 157 companies with access to the stock market got about $300 million worth of the $610 billion that had been forgiven as of mid-October, or less than 0.1 percent of the total. Nevertheless, some companies whose loans over $1 million have been forgiven had access to stock market funding both when they took the taxpayer money and when they received forgiveness, NBC News found. In the early days of the pandemic, the stock market was cratering, but since then, it has repeatedly hit new highs. "It is unlikely that a public company with substantial market value and access to capital markets will be able to make the required certification in good faith," the SBA said. Initially, borrowers did have to certify "in good faith" that the funding was necessary when they applied for loans, taking into account "their current business activity" and their ability to access other sources of capital to support their operations, such as the stock market or deep-pocketed investors. The government made it clear at the time that borrowers would be entitled to forgiveness if they met certain requirements. When the government launched the PPP, few rules were in place the idea was to get money to businesses fast. There is no evidence that Sharps and the other companies identified by NBC News broke any laws or secured their loan forgiveness improperly. Under the program, PPP loans can be forgiven if recipients maintain employee and compensation levels where they were before Covid and if at least 60 percent of the loan proceeds are spent on payroll costs and the rest on other eligible expenses, such as rent or utility payments. And while those companies could not have predicted their standout results when they applied for PPP loans, their requests for loan forgiveness came well after the gains were evident. FactSquared’s data is believed to be the most comprehensive so far, as the firm used machine learning algorithms to identify all mentions of PPP in regulatory filings.But an investigation by NBC News shows that the operations of some companies receiving loan forgiveness, like Sharps, seemed to thrive during Covid, rather than be hurt by it. A separate analysis by Morgan Stanley estimated that about $243 million of PPP funds was awarded to public companies. Last week, an investigation by the Associated Press found that at least 75 publicly traded companies had received over $300 million in PPP loans. But some borrowers were able to well exceed that cap by filing multiple applications across subsidiaries as long as each operates as a separate legal entity and employs fewer than 500 people. In theory, the PPP has a $10 million limit to each loan applicant. The highest recipient of the three firms, Ashford Hospitality Trust, applied for $76 million in 117 separate loans and received $38 million, FactSquared’s analysis found. Three companies affiliated with Dallas-based hotel group Monty Bennett-Ashford Hospitality Trust, Braemar Hotels & Resorts and Ashford-applied for $126.4 million and received $68 million. SEE ALSO: Fed Urges Some COVID-19 Loan Recipients to Return Undeserved Money
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