Usually the agency sends delinquency notices before taking action; if they are ignored, trading in the company's stock may be suspended without notice. At the same time, the SEC will initiate an administrative proceeding to revoke registration. The company will be served with a letter informing it that it has ten days in which to make some kind of case for its failure to file. If it does not do so, registration will be revoked by default.

What the company does only matters if it hopes to resume trading one day. Several recent cases suggest the SEC is now recommending that issuers who want to make things right should accept revocation, and then get two years of audited filings in order and file a new Form 10. That has the advantage of relieving the company from the obligation to catch up with dozens of old financial reports, which might prove an impossible task, but it has the disadvantage of leaving shareholders in the lurch for as long as it takes to get the filings in, find a sponsoring market maker, and get a Form 211 approved by FINRA.