Cal. Civil Code § 8704

This chapter does not apply to any of the following owners: (a) A qualified publicly traded company or a wholly owned subsidiary of a qualified publicly traded company, if the obligations of the subsidiary pursuant to the contract for the work of improvement are guaranteed by the parent. As used in this subdivision, “qualified publicly traded company” means a company having a class of equity securities listed for trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, or the NASDAQ stock market, and the nonsubordinated debt securities of which are rated as “investment grade” by either Fitch ICBA, Inc., Moody’s Investor Services, Inc., Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, or a similar statistical rating organization that is nationally recognized for rating the creditworthiness of a publicly traded company. If at any time before final payment of all amounts due pursuant to the contract the nonsubordinated debt securities of the qualified publicly traded company are downgraded to below “investment grade” by any of those rating organizations, the owner is no longer exempt from this chapter. (b) A qualified private company or a wholly owned subsidiary of a qualified private company, if the obligations of the subsidiary pursuant to the contract for the work of improvement are guaranteed by the parent. As used in this subdivision, “qualified private company” means a company that has no equity securities listed for trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, or the NASDAQ stock market, and that has a net worth determined in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in excess of fifty million dollars ($50,000,000). If at any time before final payment of all amounts due pursuant to the contract the net worth of the qualified private company is reduced below that level, the owner is no longer exempt from this chapter.