Company: AMWL
Filing Date: 2025-02-12
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-019024
Chunk: 137

Company: American Well Corp
Filing Date: 2025-02-12
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 137
---
 restated by-laws include a number of provisions that may discourage, delay or prevent a change in our management or control over us that stockholders may consider favorable. For example, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated by-laws collectively: 

•authorize three classes of common stock with disparate voting power, the Class A common stock that is listed on the NYSE, the Class B common stock that provide the holders thereof with the ability to control the outcome of matters requiring stockholder approval, even though such holders own significantly less than a majority of the shares of our outstanding Class A, Class B and Class C common stock, and the Class C common stock that do not have a vote on director elections; 

•authorize the issuance of “blank check” preferred stock that could be issued by our board of directors to prevent a takeover attempt; 

•authorize the classification of our Board of Directors into separate classes of directors to be elected on a staggered basis; 

•prohibit stockholders from calling special meetings of stockholders; 

•prohibit stockholder action by written consent, thereby requiring all actions to be taken at a duly called meeting of the stockholders; 

•require the approval of holders of at least 75% of the total combined voting power of the outstanding shares of our common stock to amend our amended and restated by-laws and certain provisions of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation; and 

•provide for notice procedures that stockholders must comply with in order to nominate candidates to our board of directors or to propose matters to be acted upon at a stockholders’ meeting, which may discourage or deter a potential acquirer from conducting a solicitation of proxies to elect the acquirer’s own slate of directors or otherwise attempting to obtain control of us. 

Moreover, because we are incorporated in Delaware, we are governed by the provisions of Section 203 of the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware (the “DGCL”), which prohibits a person who owns in excess of 15% of our outstanding voting stock from merging or combining with us for a period of three years after the date of the transaction in which the person acquired in excess of 15% of our outstanding voting stock, unless the merger or combination is approved in a prescribed manner. 

These provisions may prevent our stockholders from receiving the benefit from any premium to the market price of our Class A common stock offered by a bidder in a takeover context. Even in the absence of a takeover attempt, the existence of these provisions may