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Earnings Management. What is earnings management? Creative accounting Cook the books – falsify their financial statements. Earnings? - profit of company Investors and analysts look at earnings - attractiveness of stock - generate profit in future affects stock price now
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Earnings Management • What is earnings management? • Creative accounting • Cook the books – falsify their financial statements. • Earnings? - profit of company • Investors and analysts look at earnings - attractiveness of stock - generate profit in future affects stock price now • Management deliberately manipulate earnings so that figures match a predetermined target
Income smoothing - instead of good and bad years - keep relatively stable - adding/removing cash • Accelerating revenues, delaying expenses • Inappropriate accruals and estimates of liabilities • Excessive provisions and generous reserve accounting • Cookie jar - income smoothing", because earnings are understated in good years and overstated in bad years. • Slush fund - earnings from one time frame are hidden just in case the profit from next time frame is not big enough for management to make their bonuses
Could be material and intentional misrepresentation of results • May or may not follow rules of standard accounting practices but deviate from spirit of rule • Root of many accounting scandals • Hard to detect in some cases - can be very sophisticated or covert
What? • Aggressive accounting - practice of inappropriately misconstruing income statements for the purpose of pleasing investors and inflating stock prices. • Managers choosing accounting policies so as to maximize their own utility and/or the market value of the firm.
Why? -- Share price effects – beat analysis estimates to keep share price increasing -- Borrowing cost effects – showing good results will lower costs of borrowing -- Bonus plan effects – management get bonuses -- Political cost effects – keep earnings within what is considered an acceptable range to make sure the firms does not attract undue regulatory oversight. Example – a firm like GE making lots of money but not paying any US taxes attracts IRS scrutiny.
How? 1. Flexibility of accounting principles What problems does choice create? • Choices: • Inventory – FIFO, LIFO • Depreciation – straight line, double declining • Expensing vs. Capitalizing Why do we allow choices?
How? 2. Choices, Estimates, & Judgments • warrantees • Depreciation • method • useful life • salvage value • Allowance accounts • bad debts • sales returns
Asset impairments - sharp and unexpected decline in value - new competition and technological innovations – large write off • Restructuring costs - "Wall Street cheered when AT&T Corp. announced drastic cutbacks of 40,000 employees and a $4 billion restructuring charge on Jan. 2. AT&T’s stock surged $2.625 a share to $67.375 on the company’s vow to get into fighting trim before splitting into three parts starting later this year.“ - fact that AT&T’s stock price went up indicates that "the market" believes that the restructuring has created value to shareholders
Inventory write-downs - lower of cost or market • Environmental liabilities - potential for fines, penalties, and jail terms for violations of environmental laws - clean-up obligations • Pension assumptions - highly unionized workforces - very real financial liability - inflate the reported GAAP earnings - adjust the assumptions used in estimating pension expense • In-process R&D • Percentage of completion contracts
What is rule-based accounting? • specific details in an attempt to address as many potential contingencies as possible • standards longer and more complex • arbitrary criteria for accounting treatments that allow companies to structure transactions to circumvent unfavorable reporting • What are its advantages and disadvantages? • What is principle-based accounting? • SEC - concise statement of substantive accounting principle where the accounting objective has been incorporated as an integral part of the standard and where few, if any, exceptions or internal inconsistencies are included in the standard • What are its advantages and disadvantages?
Sickening example – SPE’s • Special purpose entity • body corporate - created to fulfill narrow, specific or temporary objectives, primarily to isolate financial risk, usually bankruptcy but sometimes a specific taxation or regulatory risk • Financial engineering: SPEs are often used in complex financial engineering schemes which have, as their main goal, the avoidance of tax or the manipulation of financial statements. Possibly the most famous example of a company using SPEs to achieve the latter goal is Enron.
