Downturns are accounting crooks’ worst enemy | Hacker News Reader

Downturns are accounting crooks’ worst enemy

economist.com

98 pointslactobacillis36 comments

For those who have never read a 10K in their life, the SEC requires all companies who publish non-GAAP metrics to also (1) publish GAAP metrics more prominently than non-GAAP metrics and (2) publish a reconciliation on how they arrived at their non-GAAP measure from the published GAAP metrics.

Here’s a writeup of the SEC rules on non-GAAP metrics in earnings reports: https://www.protiviti.com/US-en/insights/sec-issues-guidance...

There’s a difference between what Enron did (ie. fraud) vs presenting alternative ways to measure business performance. If an investor thinks community adjusted EBITDA is a good metric to judge a business and then loses all their money, that’s on the investor. Even our most recent poster child of non-GAAP shenanigans publishes the GAAP numbers ahead of the non-GAAP measures (see eg. Page 111 which is the first mention of “adjusted EBITDA” presented below GAAP metrics vs page 21 on which the GAAP income statement is first published): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1533523/000119312519...

Worth pointing out that this is largely a US only problem. Rest of the world uses IFRS which clamped down on that non-GAAP adjustment stuff pretty hard because well it’s not exactly a subtle gambit

Thanks. It is easy to forget how much reporting is specifically about the US, and that a lot of the rest of the world doesn't really have the same problems.

I think non-GAAP adjustments were mostly used in the article as a rough marker of "crookedness" that you can measure. Because by far, worldwide, the primary means of fraud involves revenue recognition and other accounting shenanigans (very much recommend the book by the same name) that both IFRS and GAAP are vulnerable to. It's just that's much harder to find that stuff out. But, when the SEC notices a problem with your revenue recognition policies affecting your revenue by a few percent, the SEC comes down on you hard. KHC was an example of that last year or maybe 2 years ago with the new rules in ASC606.

It was news to me that IFRS cracked down on non-GAAP adjustments, particularly because I follow some foreign filers in the US and haven't noticed much of a difference. But then again, I don't follow a lot of companies with the type of management that harps on EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA anyway. According to Charlie Munger, "I think you would understand any presentation using the word EBITDA, if every time you saw that word you just substituted the phrase, “bullshit earnings.”

Agreed regarding revenue being the bigger issue.

>It was news to me that IFRS cracked down on non-GAAP adjustments

It's mostly achieved by prohibiting adjustment for "extraordinary items". That stops 90% of this bullshit right there. I gather US GAAP has done the same but kept the concept of non-recurring items.

Whether presenting "Alternative Performance Measures" is allowed at all depends on the country specific regulator. Where they are it's generally in addition to the IFRS measures and if you look at ESMA (EU regulator) they require a reconciliation and various other stuff about fair presentation thereof:

https://www.esma.europa.eu/file/1689/download?token=VQsQ7JzC

the conclusion that EBITDA == “bullshit earnings” is overblown, or a feint at worst.

EBITDA lets you look at the operational performance of a business in isolation. that is, before financial considerations, where lots of little levers like tax shifting & accelerated depreciation can cook the numbers too.

if you're skeptical about one number on an income statement, you might as well be skeptical of them all (and for most public businesses, you should be skeptical).

edit: should note that "adjusted" anything on a financial statement should tingle the spidey senses.

US governments at all levels love to use GAAP since it lets them use whatever assumptions they want to make up liability numbers for defined benefit pension and retiree healthcare benefits. In fact, the US itself forced non taxpayer funded employers to use strict standards when calculating defined benefit pension liabilities (PPA 2006), but exempted taxpayer funded pension plans from any rules.

This lets current politicians and current and near future recipients of defined benefit pensions to transfer the costs to future future taxpayers.

It is true that governmental accounting standards are different from private sector ones. I believe the GASB promulgates the former; the FASB the latter.

So everybody uses "GAAP" but it's not the same standards nor "whatever assumptions they want". If they used anything else, it would still be "GAAP", too.

Buffett makes non-GAAP adjustments available because GAAP misses important nuances. Also, in the US, security appreciation and depreciation is now reported as earnings (or something ridiculous like that), so it’s pretty important to be able to explain real earnings to your shareholders.

Is there an official list of assumptions used in GAAP? According to the wikipedia, GAAP is just a bunch of very high level principles, such as be honest, consistent, give your best estimate of your finances... But it doesn't seem to prescribe any particular rules to use, just that you use them consistently. And then, what does that mean about non-GAAP ? Does non-GAAP basically allow you to be inconsistent and dishonest or use less than your best guess ?

Edit: I found a little more detail under revenue recognition page on wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_recognition

GAAP just means the local accounting standard. So US GAAP for the USA. UK GAAP mean FRS102 etc.

Non-GAAP essentially means the company decided it's extra special and the standard accounting doesn't capture it's uniqueness. Sometimes that's true but most of the time it's executive not liking what the GAAP number tells them.

A good example is WeWork's "Community Adjusted EBITDA".

See: FASB, GASB

The Bezzle, which I think has been on a HN post before: https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/the-bezzle

Sadly I can’t read it (mobile safari, private mode), I’m being asked to create an account.

https://outline.com/FPGgpv

Is that the 2nd page? It doesn't start with the story about Madoff like in the original.

Yup, sorry it clearly didn't work. Hope it is not broken. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...

On firefox you can just switch to reader mode and reload the page.

If Firefox does not offer reader mode by itself, prepend about:reader?url= to the url to force loading the page in reader mode by the way.

Thanks for the tip. I'm curious, do you know how some sites prevent the reader mode button from appearing?

From what I would guess, it might be rather that these pages do not conform to what Firefox expects from a page to be suitable to be shown in reader mode. Large pieces of text with a few pictures in them or something like that. If you check back in a few hours, I might have posted more information on this.

This might be the right place to look into:

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/default/toolkit/...

Especially:

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/file/a6a5a4f31ea26906...

Edit: this is a potshot.

Thank you thank you!!!!! This is hugely helpful.

Is there any way to turn this into a bookmarklet, so that clicking on it would prefix the current URL with that?

    javascript:window.location="about:reader?url="+window.location

(sorry I'm on my phone just guessing; this kind of stuff might not be available because security or something nowadays)

It's got to be something like that, unfortunately I just don't know the exact syntax. I've got some other javascript bookmarklets in firefox, but looking now at their links, they are a mess of %-encoding, and I'm not sure if that's important or not (perhaps they got mangled through an old import)

FWIW, here's a bookmark to get rid of static bars (the kind of thing annoying websites have stuck at the top of the page and won't go away when you scroll):

  javascript:(function()%7B(function%20()%20%7Bvar%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20*')%3Bfor%20(i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20%3C%20elements.length%3B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7Bif%20(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'fixed')%20%7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()

I don't remember it being quite so ugly when I first added it, surely bookmarks don't need to %-encode spaces and curly brackets?

Disable Javascript.

https://archive.md/xEhMd

What a horrible article most investors understand Chinese companies lie about their number all the time. The non Chinese example is WeWork which was completely rejected by the market and failed to go public?

And was rejected before the current crises.

This downturn started last year.

And Enron, Olympus, bt, WorldCom, Tesco, those people who bought dragon dictate and the African firm whose balance sheet was entirely supported by a large green gemstone. Just to name a few off the top of my head. Trying to work out a firm's true assets, liabilities and income is a genuine problem.

By referring to large green gemstone, do you refer to The Hot Rock novel main plot goal? If so, it is unbelievably appropriate.

What’s this gemstone company?

Turns out it was red, but was an £8000 african stone but ended up in an english company as a 200,000 stone and then transferred to a bankrupt english construction firm as an 11 million pound asset! Ended in tears. Unclear what eventually happened to the stone. https://www.google.com/search?q=Gem+of+Tanzania

Yes, the S&P500, that very Chinese index...

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