Updates on Federal Relief for Businesses

Dear WANADA Members,

The Treasury Department has once again updated their FAQ page for the SBA's Paycheck Protection Program, which re-opened on Monday. Given the additional scrutiny that many qualifying businesses have come under, including chains like Shake Shack and billion-dollar teams like the Los Angeles Lakers, we encourage you to review Question 31, which further clarifies the "good faith" certification that applying businesses must provide. 

Specifically, please be mindful of the following if you wish to apply for a PPP forgivable loan: "[B]efore submitting a PPP application, all borrowers should review carefully the required certification that '[c]urrent economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the Applicant.' Borrowers must make this certification in good faith, taking into account their current business activity and their ability to access other sources of liquidity sufficient to support their ongoing operations in a manner that is not significantly detrimental to the business."

We also encourage you to read NADA's topline analysis of the PPP for additional guidance. You can also review the SBA's report of how the first round of PPP funding was disbursed; the Administration reports that more than 1.6 million loans were given with the initial $342 billion or so in funding.

You can find links to all this information on the WANADA COVID-19 Information Library, and NADA has published a wealth of helpful content on their Coronavirus Hub .

As we have mentioned before, if you have not yet secured a lender for the PPP and believe you need one, you can use the SBA's Lender Match Tool. You can also view a PDF list of participating banks as of late last week, organized by state, by clicking here.

If you are a multi-dealership franchisor with more than 500 total employees, you will need your OEM's SBA franchisor codes in order to qualify for PPP funding.  You can find those franchise codes here. 

As always, we encourage due diligence to make sure that you are accessing the federal resources that are of most benefit to you, and to ensure that you are fully demonstrating why these funds are necessary to the continued health of your business and your ability to keep your employees on payroll. In that regard, NADA's guidance on PPP loan forgiveness is a very helpful resource.

If you are interested in applying for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan advance from the SBA, please note that the $60 billion in additional funding essentially lapsed immediately after the program re-opened. The good news for businesses who already applied is that this indicates that the SBA had a significant backlog in applicants from the first round of funding. 

Unlike the PPP, the EIDL loan advances are handled directly by the SBA; according to their latest report, there are still tens of billions of dollars in allocated EIDL funds that have not yet been disbursed to those who are already in the queue. 

For medium- and large-sized businesses, the Federal Reserve announced this morning that their Main Street Lending Program will now accept applicants with up to 15,000 employees and $5 billion in revenue in 2019. You can view the program's term sheets and FAQ page, which were published just this morning, at this link.

Please let me or Joe Koch ( jk@wanada.org) know if you have any questions. There are many helpful, albeit complicated and confusing, financial resources available for affected businesses; we are ready to help you make sense of these opportunities in any way we can. Thank you for your hard work and commitment during this very difficult and strange time that we're all living in.

Sincerely,
  
John O'Donnell
WANADA President and CEO