Suffolk Bancorp misses SEC filing deadline

Suffolk Bancorp missed a deadline Monday for filing overdue financial reports to avoid delisting of its stock by the Nasdaq stock market.

The bank, which has been struggling to restate prior earnings, may yet avoid delisting. A Suffolk executive said the actual delisting will be delayed for at least several weeks if the company appeals as planned.

Suffolk Bancorp, based in Riverhead, is the parent of Suffolk County National Bank, which has 30 branches, all in Suffolk. It also faces at least seven shareholder lawsuits charging that executives misrepresented its financial condition last year and earlier this year by understating reserves set aside to cover losses on loans. At least two allege that certain insiders sold their own shares before the price plummeted.

The company was planning this morning to formally notify the Securities and Exchange Commission of the missed deadline and was expecting electronic notification Tuesday from Nasdaq of the delisting, executive vice president Frank Filipo said in an interview.

According to the Nasdaq website, a company has seven days from its notification of delisting to appeal and request a hearing, which usually stays the delisting pending a decision by a hearing panel. Weeks could elapse before that process comes to completion, during which time the company hopes to restate its earnings.

"There is an ongoing process with the Nasdaq that, obviously, we will avail ourselves of," said Filipo.

Delisting is a blow to a company's prestige. A delisted stock can continue to trade electronically on an alternative quotation service, but such shares are considered more risky because there is less regulation of them.

The bank says it is profitable. "None of this has any impact on our day-to-day operations," Filipo said.

It earned $3,072,000 in the quarter ended Sept. 30. But it was unable to say how that result compared with the same period a year earlier because the bank is in the process of restating financial figures for the periods from last year's third quarter through the second quarter this year.

Filipo declined to comment on the seven shareholder suits, which were filed in federal court for the Eastern District of New York, which includes Long Island.

Suffolk Bancorp shares closed Monday at $8.68, down 25 cents, and are down more than 67 percent from its 52-week high about a year ago.