Form DEL AM Files Dataset

The Form DEL AM Files Dataset is a normalized collection of every standalone delaying amendment filed on EDGAR under SEC form type "DEL AM" — the procedural Securities Act submission whose sole legal effect is to suspend Section 8(a)'s twenty-day automatic-effectiveness clock for a pending registration statement. Each record represents one accession-numbered DEL AM submission lodged under Rule 473 of the Securities Act of 1933 against a specific underlying registration statement (typically an S-1, S-3, S-4, S-11, F-1, F-3, or N-2), pairing a parsed metadata.json description of EDGAR header fields with the original filer-authored letter the registrant transmitted to the Commission. The filer is always the issuer of the underlying registration statement, acting through its officers and counsel and signing under Rule 473. The dataset's earliest sample date is in 1994, tracking the phased rollout of mandatory electronic filing for Securities Act registrants, and is distributed as monthly ZIP containers with file types of TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset is built from EDGAR submissions whose form type is exactly DEL AM. Each such submission is a short cover-letter-style amendment that either inserts the Rule 473(a) delaying-amendment legend into the facing page of an already-filed registration statement that did not originally carry it, or re-asserts the legend in the manner contemplated by Rule 473(c). DEL AM filings carry no prospectus content, no financial statements, no exhibits, and none of the substantive disclosures associated with the underlying S-1, S-3, S-4, S-11, F-1, F-3, or related Securities Act registration form whose effectiveness is being suspended. The operative content is the quoted Rule 473(a) legend; everything else in the letter is administrative scaffolding.

The dataset covers the full population of separately accessioned DEL AM submissions on EDGAR, beginning in February 1994 when EDGAR records start. Pre-EDGAR paper delaying amendments are not part of the dataset. The corpus is small because most registration statements bake the Rule 473(a) legend directly into the facing page of the initial S-/F-/N-2 filing, which produces no DEL AM record; only the narrower path of a separately filed delaying amendment populates this dataset. The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers, and file types found inside the containers are TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF, reflecting the long history of EDGAR filing conventions from plain-text submissions in the 1990s through HTML-based modern filings.

Content Structure of a Single Record

One record is a single EDGAR submission filed under SEC form type "DEL AM" — a separately accessioned Rule 473 delaying amendment. The unit is one accession number's worth of material: a self-contained folder that pairs a parsed metadata.json description of the filing's header fields with the original document(s) the registrant transmitted to the Commission. Each record therefore captures exactly one delaying-amendment event lodged against a specific underlying registration statement, attributable to a specific filer at a specific moment of EDGAR receipt. The folder name is the accession number with dashes stripped (e.g. 000113902025000279 for accession 0001139020-25-000279), making the on-disk path itself a stable identifier that joins cleanly to any external EDGAR-keyed dataset.

A record contains two layers:

1. A filing-level metadata object (metadata.json) exposing EDGAR header fields in a flat, parseable JSON shape: form type, accession number, filed timestamp, effectiveness date, an opaque internal record id, three resolution links (primary document, full submission .txt wrapper, EDGAR filing index page), an inventory of submitted documents in documentFormatFiles[], an entities[] array describing the registrant(s) attached to the filing, and a small number of empty placeholder arrays (dataFiles, seriesAndClassesContractsInformation) reflecting the fact that DEL AM filings carry no XBRL or series/class data.

2. The original submitted document(s) — typically a single HTML letter, occasionally a plain-text .txt document, and in rare cases a PDF. The native EDGAR submission wraps the document in an SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope carrying <TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, and <DESCRIPTION> tags around the inner <TEXT> payload that holds the body of the delaying amendment. Image files that may have been part of the original EDGAR submission (letterhead logos, scanned signature graphics) are not retained in the dataset.

The metadata.json object

The metadata object describes the filing as EDGAR registered it. The salient fields:

• formType is fixed at "DEL AM" for every record.
• accessionNo carries the canonical dashed form (e.g. 0001139020-25-000279).
• filedAt is an ISO-8601 timestamp with the EDGAR Eastern-time offset; effectivenessDate carries the calendar date of the filing.
• description is the human-readable form description ("Form DEL AM - Delaying amendment").
• id is an opaque internal record identifier (32-character hex string).
• linkToFilingDetails, linkToTxt, and linkToHtml resolve, respectively, to the primary submitted document, the complete EDGAR .txt submission wrapper, and the EDGAR filing index page on sec.gov.
• linkToXbrl is the empty string for every record because DEL AM filings do not carry XBRL.
• documentFormatFiles[] enumerates each submitted document with sequence, size (bytes, encoded as a string), documentUrl, description, and type. The first entry is the delaying-amendment letter itself with type "DEL AM"; additional entries cover any companion documents such as the EDGAR-generated complete-submission text wrapper.
• dataFiles[] is empty.
• seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[] is empty for ordinary corporate registrants and is reserved for filings tied to investment-company series/class structures.

The entities[] array describes each filer attached to the submission. A typical entry contains:

• companyName with the EDGAR role suffix in parentheses (e.g. "BIOHARVEST SCIENCES INC. (Filer)").
• cik — SEC Central Index Key.
• irsNo — IRS taxpayer identification number, zeroed out ("000000000") for foreign filers.
• fileNo — the registration-statement file number of the underlying S-1, S-3, F-3, S-4, S-11, or related Securities Act filing whose effectiveness is being suspended. This is the cross-reference key linking a DEL AM record to the registration statement it operates on.
• filmNo — EDGAR film number for this specific submission.
• fiscalYearEnd — encoded as MMDD.
• stateOfIncorporation — EDGAR two-character state or country code (e.g. "A1" for British Columbia, "DE" for Delaware).
• act — the act under which the filing is made, "33" for the Securities Act.
• sic — SIC code paired with its industry description in a single string (e.g. "2834 Pharmaceutical Preparations").
• type — mirrors the form type ("DEL AM").
• tickers — array of trading symbols associated with the filer.

When the underlying registration statement has co-registrants, entities[] contains one entry per registrant, each tagged with its own role suffix in companyName.

The submitted delaying-amendment document

The primary document is, with very rare exceptions, a short cover letter following a tightly templated structure:

1. Filer letterhead block — registrant name, mailing address, telephone, occasionally email or web address.

2. Date line and EDGAR transmission directive — the calendar date of the letter, often accompanied by a VIA EDGAR notation.

3. Addressee block — the United States Securities and Exchange Commission at 100 F Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20549, sometimes with a named branch or staff attention line.

4. Re: block — identifies the filer, the registration form being delayed (e.g. Form S-1, Form S-3, Form F-3), and the SEC file number, which matches entities[*].fileNo in the metadata.

5. Salutation — typically "Ladies and Gentlemen:".

6. Operative paragraph — invokes Rule 473(c) (or, in earlier filings, Rule 473(a) directly) and states that the registrant hereby incorporates by reference into the facing page of the registration statement the delaying-amendment legend prescribed by Rule 473(a).

7. Quoted Rule 473(a) legend — the load-bearing content of every DEL AM filing, set in bold or block-quote form and reproduced essentially verbatim across all records:

   "The registrant hereby amends this Registration Statement on such date or dates as may be necessary to delay its effective date until the Registrant shall file a further amendment which specifically states that this Registration Statement shall thereafter become effective in accordance with Section 8(a) of the Securities Act of 1933 or until this Registration Statement shall become effective on such date as the Securities and Exchange Commission, acting pursuant to said Section 8(a), may determine."

8. Administrative closing — typically a statement that no filing fees are due, occasionally a reference to outside counsel, sometimes a request that staff direct further communications to a named contact.

9. Signature block — By: /s/ <signer> together with the printed name and title of the signing officer (commonly in-house counsel, corporate secretary, chief financial officer, or another authorized officer).

10. cc: line — outside counsel or other recipients of record copies.

Around this body sits EDGAR's SGML <DOCUMENT> wrapper carrying the form type tag (<TYPE>DEL AM), the document sequence number, the filename, and a free-text description such as DELAYING AMENDMENT. The wrapper is the standard EDGAR submission envelope; only the inner <TEXT> payload is filer-authored.

What is included

Each record includes the parsed metadata object, the primary submitted delaying-amendment document, and any other non-image documents that were part of the original EDGAR submission. The cross-reference between metadata.documentFormatFiles[*].documentUrl and the on-disk filename in the same folder allows direct programmatic resolution from metadata to local document. The accession number is encoded both in metadata.accessionNo (dashed form) and in the folder name (undashed form).

What is excluded or structurally separate

• Image files that may have been part of the original EDGAR submission (letterhead logos, scanned signature graphics) are not retained.
• The underlying registration statement (the S-1, S-3, F-3, etc.) is not part of the DEL AM record; it lives under its own accession number elsewhere on EDGAR. The cross-link is entities[*].fileNo, which equals the file number quoted in the Re: block of the letter.
• EDGAR correspondence, comment letters, or staff acceleration orders that may relate to the same registration statement are separate filings under their own form types and accession numbers.
• Series and class metadata is empty for ordinary corporate registrants; the seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[] array is reserved for investment-company filings and is not populated for typical DEL AM records.

File-format conventions and historical evolution

The file types found in the dataset are TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF, reflecting the long history of EDGAR filing conventions. Across the timeline of the dataset (February 1994 to present), the primary submitted document follows the same trajectory as Securities Act filings generally: filings from the 1994-2001 period were transmitted as plain-text submissions and appear as .txt documents with the delaying-amendment letter rendered in fixed-width ASCII inside the SGML <TEXT> block; from the early 2000s onward HTML became the dominant body format, and modern filings consist almost exclusively of an .htm document plus the JSON metadata file. PDF documents appear occasionally where a filer has chosen to submit a scanned or print-formatted version of the letter. The JSON metadata layer is a dataset-side normalization rather than an EDGAR-native artifact: it exposes header fields parsed from the original SGML submission so that filings from any era can be addressed with the same field schema.

The substantive content is essentially stable across the entire 1994-present range because the operative text is dictated by Rule 473(a), which has not changed in any way that affects the body of the legend. What has changed is the presentation: ASCII letterheads and signature lines in the 1990s, HTML formatting in the 2000s and beyond, and richer typographic rendering (bold legend, hyperlinked counsel contacts) in recent filings. The structural anatomy — letterhead, Re: block with file number, operative Rule 473 invocation, quoted legend, signature — is recognizable across the full dataset.

Interpretation and extraction notes

• The Rule 473(a) legend is the dispositive content. A text-mining pass over the dataset can rely on the verbatim or near-verbatim quotation of the legend as the canonical signal of a delaying amendment; deviations are almost always typographic (line breaks, smart quotes, bold/italic formatting) rather than substantive.
• The Re: file number is the join key. entities[*].fileNo in the metadata and the file number quoted in the body of the letter both point to the underlying registration statement; they should agree, and joining on this field is the way to relate a DEL AM record to the S-/F- filing whose effectiveness it is suspending.
• Multi-filer submissions are possible. When the underlying registration statement has co-registrants, entities[] carries one entry per registrant, each with its own role suffix in companyName; the file number is shared across these entries.
• Effectiveness semantics are about the registration statement, not the DEL AM in isolation. The presence of a DEL AM filing for a given file number means the twenty-day automatic effectiveness clock is suspended for that registration statement; reconstructing the actual effectiveness state requires reading the DEL AM record together with the registration statement and any subsequent amendments, acceleration requests, or Commission orders.
• Empty placeholder arrays are stable. Pipelines should expect dataFiles[] and (for ordinary corporate filers) seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[] to be empty, and linkToXbrl to be an empty string. A DEL AM record is, almost always, just the metadata object and a single short letter.
• Folder naming and URL reconstruction. The folder name is the accession number with dashes removed; converting between the dashed (metadata.accessionNo) and undashed (folder-name) forms is the standard way to move between on-disk paths and EDGAR URLs.
• SGML wrapper versus filer-authored body. When extracting body text, strip the EDGAR <DOCUMENT>/<TYPE>/<SEQUENCE>/<FILENAME>/<DESCRIPTION> headers and process only the inner <TEXT> payload; the wrapper tags are EDGAR transport artifacts and not part of the registrant's letter.

Who Files or Publishes This Dataset, and When

A Form DEL AM is filed by the registrant of a Securities Act of 1933 registration statement that wants to prevent that statement (or a post-effective amendment to it) from going effective automatically under Section 8(a). The filer is the issuer named on the underlying registration statement, acting through its officers and counsel, and signing under Rule 473(b) in the same manner as the underlying filing (typically by the registrant and a majority of its board or persons performing similar functions). The DEL AM is purely procedural; it carries no substantive disclosure, and its only effect is to suspend the twenty-day automatic-effectiveness clock.

Filing population

DEL AM filers are Securities Act registrants with a pending statement still under staff review who, for procedural reasons, file the delaying amendment as a standalone submission rather than rely on the cover-page legend. The population includes:

• domestic operating companies on Forms S-1, S-3, and Form S-4
• foreign private issuers on Forms Form F-1, F-3, and Form F-4
• closed-end funds and business development companies on Form N-2
• REITs, MLPs, and similar pass-through registrants
• smaller reporting companies and emerging growth companies with pending statements

Underwriters, selling shareholders, and other transaction participants do not file DEL AM. Only the registrant does.

Triggering event

The trigger is Section 8(a) of the Securities Act, under which a registration statement becomes effective automatically on the twentieth calendar day after filing (or after the latest amendment) unless a delaying amendment is on file or the Commission accelerates effectiveness. Rule 473 supplies the mechanism:

• Rule 473(a) authorizes the standard cover-page legend that suspends effectiveness until the registrant files a further amendment requesting effectiveness or the Commission sets an effective date.
• Rule 473(b) governs the form and signatures when the delay is filed as a separate amendment. This separately filed amendment is what populates the DEL AM dataset.
• Rule 473(c) extends the same delay mechanism to post-effective amendments.

A registrant files DEL AM when it needs to keep the statement pending past day twenty because staff review is incomplete, pricing is not ready, or a post-effective amendment would otherwise go effective by operation of law.

Why a separate DEL AM rather than cover-page language

Most registration statements bake the Rule 473(a) legend into the facing page of the initial S-1, S-3, S-4, F-series, or N-2 filing. That embedded legend produces no DEL AM record. A standalone DEL AM appears only in narrower situations:

• the original statement was filed without the cover-page legend and the registrant must add the delay
• a post-effective amendment requires its own delay under Rule 473(c)
• a prior amendment removed or altered the delay and it must be reinstated
• counsel chooses to file the delay as a discrete amendment rather than fold it into a substantive amendment

This is why the dataset is comparatively small.

Timing

There is no periodic schedule. Filing is event-driven and tied to the Section 8(a) twenty-day clock. The DEL AM must be on file before that period elapses for any filing or amendment whose automatic effectiveness the registrant wants to suspend. It remains in force until the registrant files a further amendment requesting effectiveness under Section 8(a) or the Commission accelerates effectiveness under Rule 461. The Commission imposes no deadline of its own.

EDGAR records begin in February 1994, tracking the phased rollout of mandatory electronic filing for Securities Act registrants. Pre-EDGAR paper delaying amendments are not part of the dataset.

Important distinctions

• Filer versus underlying parties. The filer is always the registrant. Underwriters, selling shareholders, and agents never file DEL AM.
• DEL AM versus cover-page legend. Only standalone, separately filed delaying amendments appear here. The far more common Rule 473(a) cover-page legend produces no DEL AM record.
• DEL AM versus Form RW. DEL AM keeps the statement pending; Form RW withdraws it entirely. Registrants abandoning an offering use RW.
• DEL AM versus pre-effective amendments (S-1/A, F-1/A, N-2/A). Substantive amendments are filed under the parent form's amendment suffix and usually carry the delay language themselves. DEL AM covers only the discrete delay-only submission.
• automatic shelf registrations. WKSIs filing on S-3ASR or F-3ASR rely on Rule 462(e) immediate effectiveness and do not use DEL AM.
• Open-end funds and UITs. Registrants on Forms Form N-1A or Form N-8B-2 operate under Investment Company Act Section 8 and Rule 485 effectiveness rules, not Section 8(a), and do not file DEL AM. Closed-end funds and BDCs on Form N-2 do.
• Foreign private issuers. foreign private issuers (FPIs) on F-series forms are subject to the same Section 8(a) clock and file DEL AM on the same basis as domestic issuers.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form DEL AM occupies a narrow procedural slot in the Securities Act registration workflow. It is not a disclosure document, not a substantive amendment, and not a withdrawal. The most useful comparisons are with the registration statements whose effectiveness it defers, the pre- and post-effective amendments to those statements, formal withdrawal forms, and acceleration requests.

Securities Act registration statements (S-1, S-3, S-11, F-1, F-3)

These are the primary filings DEL AM exists to delay. Each is a substantive, disclosure-rich document containing the prospectus, risk factors, financials, and exhibits. In most cases the Rule 473 delaying legend is embedded directly on the cover or facing sheet of the registration statement, so no separate filing is needed.

DEL AM captures only the alternative path: a standalone EDGAR submission used when the legend was not included on the cover or when the registrant elected to file the delaying amendment separately. Registration statement datasets answer what is being offered; DEL AM answers only whether the issuer separately invoked Rule 473 to defer automatic effectiveness.

pre-effective amendments (S-1/A, S-3/A, F-1/A, S-11/A)

Pre-effective amendments are the substantive companion filings most often confused with DEL AM. Each "/A" filing revises the registration statement to address staff comments, update financials, or change pricing terms, and frequently carries real disclosure changes.

DEL AM makes no substantive amendment. It only adds or extends the Rule 473 legend to stop the 20-day Section 8(a) clock. A pre-effective amendment can itself include the delaying legend, eliminating the need for a separate DEL AM. The two often appear in the same registration cycle but serve different functions: one revises content, the other suspends a statutory timer.

Post-effective amendments (POS AM)

POS AM filings amend a registration statement after it has become effective, typically to update a prospectus, add or deregister securities, or refresh financials for a continuous offering. They operate after the Section 8(a) effectiveness threshold.

DEL AM operates exclusively before that threshold. Once a registration is effective, Rule 473 no longer applies. POS AM and DEL AM are temporal opposites in the same registration lifecycle and never overlap in legal function, despite both being labeled "amendments."

Registration withdrawal forms (RW, AW)

Form RW withdraws a registration statement; Form AW withdraws a specific amendment. Both reflect a decision to abandon or pull a filing from active status.

DEL AM takes the opposite posture: the registrant keeps the registration on file but prevents it from going effective on the default timeline. Withdrawal forms end the registration process; delaying amendments hold it open. Users studying abandoned offerings should look to RW/AW; users studying offerings kept open under SEC review should look to DEL AM alongside the underlying registration and any pre-effective amendments.

Acceleration requests (Rule 461)

acceleration requests under Rule 461 are the conceptual mirror image of DEL AM. An acceleration request asks the SEC to declare effectiveness sooner than the statutory timeline allows; a delaying amendment asks that timeline to stop running. Both interact with Section 8(a), but they push in opposite directions and travel through different procedural channels (correspondence and cover-letter requests rather than a standalone form type).

Boundary summary

DEL AM is a single-purpose, content-free procedural filing. Its entire substantive payload is the Rule 473 legend, and its only legal effect is to prevent automatic effectiveness 20 calendar days after filing. It carries no disclosure, no financial data, and no offering terms, and the form-type field does not identify the underlying registration form, S-1, S-11, F-1, or otherwise, so context must be reconstructed from the filer's broader EDGAR record.

This makes DEL AM categorically different from disclosure-bearing registration datasets, substantive amendment datasets, and termination-oriented withdrawal datasets. None of those can answer questions about the timing mechanics of effectiveness, and DEL AM cannot answer anything about offering content. Its most productive use is as a procedural signal layered onto registration and amendment data, marking the points where issuers separately invoked Rule 473 to keep staff review periods open.

Who Uses This Dataset

DEL AM filings are the Rule 473 mechanism that stops a registration statement from going effective on the 20-day Section 8(a) clock. The dataset has a narrow but specific professional audience focused on registration timing, SEC review status, and offering pipelines.

Capital markets attorneys

Securities lawyers representing issuers and underwriters use entities[] to confirm which registrant has just delayed effectiveness, fileNo to tie the DEL AM back to the parent S-1/A, S-3/A, S-4, or F-series, and filedAt to reconcile against expected comment cycles. Workflows include verifying Rule 473 boilerplate, tracking adverse-party deals, and timing client filings around competing registrations.

IPO and follow-on analysts

Equity research and syndicate analysts read DEL AMs as a real-time signal that a registration is still in active SEC review rather than auto-effective. The gap between original filing, amendments, and each delaying amendment feeds pricing-window models, deal pipelines, and forward calendars sent to trading desks and buy-side clients.

Registration paralegals and filing desks

Filing-desk staff at law firms and in-house legal departments validate that DEL AMs filed on a client's behalf were accepted by EDGAR, reconcile docketing systems against filedAt, and confirm fileNo matches the managed registration. The dataset is a backstop for filing calendars and Rule 473 audit trails.

In-house SEC reporting and compliance

Disclosure-controls teams at registrants audit their own filing history, verify delaying amendments landed when intended, and produce evidence for internal audit, external auditors, and disclosure committees that every Rule 473 action across active offerings was timely.

ECM and DCM bankers

Equity and debt capital markets bankers cross-reference DEL AMs with internal pipeline trackers to infer which competing offerings remain in review, gauge how aggressively a competitor is iterating on its prospectus, and align roadshow timing against likely launch windows for adjacent deals.

Filing-tracking and reg-tech vendors

Data engineers at filing-monitoring and deal-intelligence vendors ingest the feed to power IPO calendars, shelf-status trackers, and effectiveness-watch alerts. They rely on stable entities[] identifiers for issuer mapping, fileNo for joining to S-series and F-series filings, and filedAt for real-time notifications.

Event-driven and quant research

Systematic and event-driven desks at hedge funds and prop trading firms use DEL AM activity as a feature in models that predict pricing dates, lockup mechanics, and post-effectiveness trading. CIKs in entities[] join to security masters; fileNo assembles each registration's full amendment history.

Forensic and litigation support

Forensic accountants and litigation-support analysts working securities-fraud, prospectus-liability, or underwriter-diligence matters use filedAt and fileNo to reconstruct what was on file at specific moments and whether effectiveness could have been triggered before given disclosures. Outputs include expert reports, deposition exhibits, and chronologies.

Academic and policy researchers

Researchers studying SEC review duration and the path to effectiveness treat the corpus as a near-complete record of Rule 473 events since 1994. They build time-series of delaying-amendment activity and link DEL AMs to issuers and offerings to study review length, amendment frequency, and correlations with deal type or market conditions.

RAG and LLM developers

Teams building retrieval systems over SEC filings index DEL AM records alongside parent registration statements via fileNo, letting financial assistants answer whether a registration is still pending, when the latest delaying amendment was filed, and how many amendments an issuer has stacked against an offering.

Across these users, three fields do the work: entities[] for registrant identity, fileNo for the registration linkage, and filedAt for the timestamp that anchors each Rule 473 action in the offering timeline.

Specific Use Cases

The dataset is most useful when layered onto registration-statement workflows as a procedural signal that the Section 8(a) clock has been stopped. The following use cases reflect concrete operational patterns.

Reconstructing the effectiveness timeline of a registration statement

Join DEL AM records to S-1, S-3, S-4, Form S-11, F-1, or F-3 filings on entities[*].fileNo and order by filedAt to build a per-registration chronology of delays, amendments, and acceleration events. The resulting timeline supports staff-review-duration studies, deal-team status reports, and litigation chronologies that need to establish what was on file and whether effectiveness could have been triggered on a given date.

Real-time effectiveness-watch alerts for IPO and shelf calendars

Filing-monitoring and deal-intelligence pipelines watch new DEL AM accessions, extract entities[*].cik, entities[*].fileNo, and filedAt, and push alerts that a registration is still in active SEC review rather than drifting toward auto-effectiveness. The output feeds IPO calendars, shelf-status dashboards, and syndicate-desk pipeline trackers keyed to specific issuers and file numbers.

Auditing a registrant's own Rule 473 filing history

In-house legal and disclosure-controls teams pull every DEL AM where entities[*].cik matches the registrant, reconcile each accessionNo and filedAt against the internal docketing system, and confirm the Re: file number in the letter agrees with entities[*].fileNo. The product is an evidence pack for disclosure committees and external auditors showing every Rule 473 action across active offerings.

Verifying Rule 473 legend integrity across submitted letters

Compliance and reg-tech teams text-mine the inner <TEXT> payload of each documentFormatFiles[0] entry, normalize for line breaks and smart quotes, and diff the extracted legend against the canonical Rule 473(a) text. Deviations are flagged for review, producing a QA report on legend conformance across a firm's filings or across a vendor's full ingest.

Building features for event-driven and quant models

Systematic desks aggregate DEL AM events per fileNo, count delaying amendments stacked against each registration, and measure intervals between filedAt of successive DEL AMs and pre-effective amendments. These counts and gaps feed models that predict pricing windows, time-to-effectiveness, and post-effectiveness trading behavior, joined to security masters via entities[*].cik and entities[*].tickers.

Indexing DEL AMs alongside parent registrations for RAG systems

Retrieval pipelines for financial assistants index each DEL AM record under both accessionNo and entities[*].fileNo, link it to the parent S-/F-series filing, and store filedAt plus the extracted signer and counsel contacts from the letter body. Downstream queries answer whether a given registration is still pending, when the latest delaying amendment landed, and how many Rule 473 events an issuer has stacked against the offering.

Dataset Access

The Form DEL AM Files dataset can be accessed in three ways: through the dataset index JSON API, by downloading the full archive, or by downloading individual monthly container files.

Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-del-am-files.json

This endpoint returns dataset metadata and the list of all available container files. It returns the dataset name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total record count, total size in bytes, form types covered, container format, and the file types contained within each container. It also includes the full dataset download URL and an array of containers, where each container entry includes its download URL, key, size, record count, and updated timestamp. This endpoint does not require an API key and can be polled to monitor which containers were updated in the most recent refresh, allowing selective re-downloads on a daily basis.

          1
          {
        

          2
            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6989-964d-7b2c7d7df435",
        

          3
            "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-del-am-files.zip",
        

          4
            "name": "Form DEL AM Files Dataset",
        

          5
            "description": "Form DEL AM filings are separately filed delaying amendments submitted pursuant to Rule 473 under the Securities Act of 1933.",
        

          6
            "updatedAt": "2026-04-27T02:51:19.000Z",
        

          7
            "earliestSampleDate": "1994-01-01",
        

          8
            "totalRecords": 1641,
        

          9
            "totalSize": 6426648,
        

          10
            "formTypes": ["DEL AM"],
        

          11
            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

          12
            "fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML", "PDF"],
        

          13
            "containers": [
        

          14
              {
        

          15
                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-del-am-files/2026/2026-03.zip",
        

          16
                "key": "2026/2026-03.zip",
        

          17
                "size": 138204,
        

          18
                "records": 6,
        

          19
                "updatedAt": "2026-04-27T02:51:19.000Z"
        

          20
              }
        

          21
            ]
        

          22
          }
        

Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-del-am-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

This endpoint returns the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive containing every monthly container. It is the simplest option for bulk loading the full historical record set in one request. This endpoint requires an API key.

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-del-am-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Each container is a monthly ZIP archive following the path structure form-del-am-files/YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip. Use this option to retrieve filings from a specific month rather than downloading the full dataset, for example after detecting that a particular container has been updated in the index JSON. This endpoint requires an API key.

Frequently Asked Questions

What form does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers exactly one EDGAR form type, DEL AM — separately filed delaying amendments submitted pursuant to Rule 473 under the Securities Act of 1933. The formType field in every record's metadata.json is fixed at "DEL AM".

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record represents a single EDGAR submission filed under form type DEL AM: one accession number's worth of material, organized as a folder pairing a parsed metadata.json file with the original filer-authored delaying-amendment letter. Each record captures exactly one Rule 473 delaying-amendment event lodged against a specific underlying registration statement.

Who is required to file Form DEL AM?

The filer is always the registrant of a Securities Act of 1933 registration statement — typically a domestic operating company on Forms S-1, S-3, or S-4, a foreign private issuer on Forms F-1, F-3, or F-4, a closed-end fund or BDC on Form N-2, or a similar pass-through registrant such as a REIT or MLP. Underwriters, selling shareholders, and other transaction participants do not file DEL AM.

When does a registrant file DEL AM rather than just include the cover-page legend?

Most registration statements bake the Rule 473(a) legend directly into the facing page of the initial S-/F-/N-2 filing, which produces no DEL AM record. A standalone DEL AM appears only when the original statement was filed without the cover-page legend, when a post-effective amendment requires its own delay under Rule 473(c), when a prior amendment removed or altered the delay and it must be reinstated, or when counsel chooses to file the delay as a discrete amendment rather than fold it into a substantive amendment.

How does DEL AM differ from Form RW or a pre-effective amendment like S-1/A?

DEL AM keeps a registration statement pending by stopping the Section 8(a) twenty-day clock; Form RW withdraws the registration entirely. Pre-effective amendments under the parent form's amendment suffix (S-1/A, F-1/A, N-2/A) make substantive disclosure changes and usually carry the delay language themselves, while DEL AM is a content-free procedural filing whose entire payload is the Rule 473(a) legend.

What time period does the dataset cover, and what file format is it distributed in?

The earliest sample date is in 1994, tracking the phased rollout of mandatory electronic filing on EDGAR; pre-EDGAR paper delaying amendments are not included. The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers under the path structure form-del-am-files/YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip, and the file types found inside the containers are TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF.

How do I link a DEL AM record to the underlying registration statement?

Use entities[*].fileNo from the DEL AM record's metadata.json — this is the SEC file number of the underlying S-1, S-3, S-4, S-11, F-1, F-3/A or related Securities Act registration statement whose effectiveness the DEL AM is suspending. The same file number is quoted in the Re: block of the filer-authored letter, so the metadata field and the body text should agree and provide the canonical join key into registration-statement and amendment datasets.