ReShape Lifesciences Inc

Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures

Rule 13a-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), defines the term “disclosure controls and procedures” as those controls and procedures designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by a company in the reports that it files or submits under the Exchange Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in the SEC’s rules and forms and that such information is accumulated and communicated to the company’s management, including its principal executive and principal financial officers, or persons performing similar functions, as appropriate to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure. Our internal control system was designed to provide reasonable assurance to our management and board of directors regarding the preparation and fair presentation of published financial statements. All internal control systems, no matter how well designed, have inherent limitations. Therefore, even those systems determined to be effective can provide only reasonable assurance with respect to financial statement preparation and presentation. An internal control material weakness is a significant deficiency, or aggregation of deficiencies, that does not reduce to a relatively low level the risk that material misstatements in financial statements will be prevented or detected on a timely basis by employees in the normal course of their work. An internal control significant deficiency, or aggregation of deficiencies, is one that could result in a misstatement of the financial statements that is more than inconsequential. In making its assessment of internal control over financial reporting management used the criteria issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO) in Internal Control - Integrated Framework (2013). Our management assessed the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2023, and determined that our internal control over financial reporting was not effective at a reasonable assurance level due to the following material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting:

Control Environment: The Company has insufficient internal resources with appropriate accounting and finance knowledge and expertise to design, implement, document and operate effective internal controls over the financial reporting process. As a result, there was a lack of management review over several areas of the consolidated financial statements, including errors which were individually assessed as significant deficiencies that, when aggregated, resulted in a material weakness related to: 1) insufficient review of obsolete and scrap inventory; 2) insufficient reviews of accounts payable; and 3) inappropriate application of accounting standards related to functional currency. In addition to these identified errors, there were other areas of the consolidated financial statements that were impacted by certain deficiencies. During the prior year there were deficiencies identified that have not yet been remediated including misstatements of inaccurate reporting of earnings per share due to formula errors over the weighted average share calculation spreadsheet and errors to the stock-based compensation expense. The root cause of all of the deficiencies identified above was related to insufficient internal resources with appropriate accounting and finance knowledge, which aggregated into this material weakness.

Journal Entry Access and Review: The Company did not have effective processes to ensure that all journal entries were properly approved prior to being posted to the general ledger. Furthermore, a segregation of duties conflict is present as the Sr. Accounting Manager has the ability to both prepare and post journal entries to the general ledger. As a result, it was concluded that there is material weakness in the design and operating effectiveness of internal controls over access and reviews of journal entries.

Information Technology (“IT”) Access Change and IT Security: A segregation of duties conflict is present as access, change management and other IT security risks to the Company’s information technology systems are not monitored or reviewed on a timely basis. This material weakness resulted from the aggregation of various control deficiencies.

Financial Reporting:

Inventory Capitalization – The Company’s controls were not designed effectively as the Company did not have a process in place to evaluate the amount of inventory, cost of goods sold, general and administrative expenses, and research and development expenses.

Income Taxes – The Company did not design and maintain effective management review controls at a sufficient level of precision over the accounting for income taxes. Management’s controls surrounding the evaluation of income tax provision and related disclosures were not operating effectively as the disclosure was not updated to reflect the appropriate tax amortization related to the accrued settlement account. While this did not have an impact on the financial statements due to the full valuation allowance recorded on the deferred tax assets, this did have an impact on the presentation of the prior year footnote disclosure. Additionally, there were errors identified within the tax provision during the prior year related to cost of goods sold for the Company’s foreign entities. This material weakness resulted in certain material corrections to the financial statements including the establishment of a FIN 48 liability, the tax benefit related to impairment charges recorded for the IPR&D in the prior year, the overstatement of the deferred tax asset and valuation allowance related to depreciable assets in the prior year, a return to provision adjustment in 2022 related to Obalon net operating losses generated in 2021 as a result of inaccurate stock compensation recorded within the tax provision and a difference in pretax book income that was unaccounted for in the disclosure.

The following financial reporting material weakness was identified during the prior year that has not yet been remediated.

Purchase Accounting – The Company did not design and maintain effective management review controls at a sufficient level of precision over the accounting for transactions related to the prepaid D&O insurance policy purchased in connection with the merger transaction in June 2021. This material weakness resulted in certain material corrections to the financial statements and in the restatement of the consolidated financial statements.

We are currently implementing our remediation plan to address the material weaknesses identified above. Such measures include:

Management’s Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

The Company’s management, including the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting, as such term is defined in Rule 13a-15(f) under the Exchange Act. Under the supervision and with the participation of the Company’s management, including the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, the Company conducted an evaluation of the effectiveness of its internal control over financial reporting based on the framework in*Internal Control–Integrated Framework (2013)*issued by the Committee of sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO). Based on that evaluation, the Company’s management concluded that its internal control over financial reporting was not effective as of December 31, 2023.

Changes in Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

No changes in our internal control over financial reporting occurred during our most recent fiscal quarter that has materially affected, or is reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.

We believe that a control system, no matter how well designed and operated, cannot provide absolute assurance that the objectives of the control system are met, and no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that all control issues and instances of fraud, if any, within any company have been detected.