The warrants have been issued in registered form under a warrant agreement between Continental Stock Transfer & Trust Company, as warrant agent, and us. You should review a copy of the warrant agreement, which is filed as an exhibit to the Annual Report on Form 10-K, for a complete description of the terms and conditions applicable to the warrants. The warrant agreement provides that the terms of the warrants may be amended without the consent of any holder to cure any ambiguity or correct any defective provision, but requires the approval by the holders of at least 50% of the then outstanding public warrants to make any change that adversely affects the interests of the registered holders of public warrants. If an amendment adversely affects the private placement warrants in a different manner than the public warrants or vice versa, then approval of holders of at least 65% of the then-outstanding public warrants and 65% of the then-outstanding private placement warrants, voting as separate classes, is required.
In addition, if we issue additional shares of common stock or equity-linked securities for capital raising purposes in connection with the closing of our initial business combination at a newly issued price of less than $9.20 per share of common stock (with such issue price or effective issue price to be determined in good faith by our board of directors and, in the case of any such issuance to our sponsor or its affiliates, without taking into account any founder shares held by our sponsor or its affiliates, as applicable, prior to such issuance), the exercise price of the warrants will be adjusted (to the nearest cent) to be equal to 115% of the newly issued price, the $18.00 per share redemption trigger price described above will be adjusted (to the nearest cent) to be equal to 180% of the newly issued price, and the $10.00 per share redemption trigger price described above will be adjusted (to the nearest cent) to be equal to the newly issued price.
The warrants may be exercised upon surrender of the warrant certificate on or prior to the expiration date at the offices of the warrant agent, with the exercise form on the reverse side of the warrant certificate completed and executed as indicated, accompanied by full payment of the exercise price (or on a cashless basis, if applicable), by certified or official bank check payable to us, for the number of warrants being exercised. The warrantholders do not have the rights or privileges of holders of Class A common stock or any voting rights until they exercise their warrants and receive shares of Class A common stock. After the issuance of shares of Class A common stock upon exercise of the warrants, each holder will be entitled to one (1) vote for each share held of record on all matters to be voted on by stockholders.
No fractional shares will be issued upon exercise of the warrants. If, upon exercise of the warrants, a holder would be entitled to receive a fractional interest in a share, we will, upon exercise, round down to the nearest whole number of shares of Class A common stock to be issued to the warrantholder.
Private Placement Warrants and Forward Purchase Warrants
As of March 29, 2022, 10,500,000 private placement warrants were outstanding.
The private placement warrants (including the Class A common stock issuable upon exercise of the private placement warrants) are not transferable, assignable or salable until 30 days after the completion of our initial business combination (except, among other limited exceptions, to our officers and directors and other persons or entities affiliated with our sponsor), and they will not be redeemable by us (except as described above under “-Redemption of Warrants When the Price Per Share of Class A Common Stock Equals or Exceeds $10.00”) so long as they are held by our sponsor or its permitted transferees. Our sponsor, or its permitted transferees, has the option to exercise the private placement warrants on a cashless basis. Otherwise, the private placement warrants have terms and provisions that are identical to those of the warrants sold as part of the units in our initial public offering, including as to exercise price, exercisability and exercise period. If the private placement warrants are held by holders other than our sponsor or its permitted transferees, the private placement warrants will be redeemable by us in all redemption scenarios and exercisable by the holders on the same basis as the warrants included in the units sold in our initial public offering.
If holders of the private placement warrants elect to exercise them on a cashless basis, they would pay the exercise price by surrendering their warrants in exchange for a number of shares of Class A common stock equal to the quotient obtained by dividing (x) the product of (A) the number of shares of Class A common stock underlying the warrants and (B) the difference between the exercise price of the warrants and the “fair market value” (defined below) by (y) such fair market value. The “fair market value” shall mean the average reported last sale price of the Class A common stock for the 10 trading days ending on the third trading day prior to the date on which the notice of warrant exercise is sent to the warrant agent. The reason that we have agreed that these warrants will be exercisable on a cashless basis so long as they are held by our sponsor or its permitted transferees is because it is not known at this time whether they will be affiliated with us following a business combination. If they remain affiliated with us, their ability to sell our securities in the open market will be significantly limited. We expect to have policies in place that prohibit insiders from selling our securities except during specific periods of time. Even during such periods of time when insiders will be permitted to sell our securities, an insider cannot trade in our securities if he or she is in possession of material non-public information. Accordingly, unlike public stockholders who could sell the shares of Class A common stock issuable upon exercise of the warrants freely in the open market, the insiders could be significantly restricted from doing so. As a result, we believe that allowing the holders to exercise such warrants on a cashless basis is appropriate.