Apple accidently misstated earnings?

It seems that internal stock issue irregularities may also affect the reliability of apple's financial earnings reports, so they've announced they might be restating some of the reports filed since 2002.


But at least this was a mistake apple noticed, apple announced and apple has hired independant auditors to investigate, so no cover-ups here.

Here's the link to the article:
http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/artic...8-04_00-52-38_N03373355&type=comktNews&rpc=44

Yes, once again the internet nonsense machine has started. A Digg article entitled "Apple has been doctoring numbers since 2002" has already cropped up. It's good to know that they found it interanally and went to the SEC directly. A company I used to work for (naming no names) restated earnings after a major blunder just two shorts months after the Enron mess. You can imagine what happened to the share price ...

sketchy....

This has been going around the tech industry for a few years. Apple is far from the only one who has had this happen, but at least they are being up front about. The stock isn't going to take a bit hit over this.

baggss said:

This has been going around the tech industry for a few years. Apple is far from the only one who has had this happen, but at least they are being up front about. The stock isn't going to take a bit hit over this.

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The stock is down 3 dollars today... (for some people hundreds of thousands of dollars, those people can't be to happy right now)

I don't consider that a big hit, and it will likely rebound shorly....

Let's be honest, anyone who has enough stock in Apple to lose Hundreds of Thousands of dollars on a $3/share stock hit is not likely to notice it anyway.

This has given me a 400 dollar hit so far today, but even if I decided to sell it would be a massive gain for me so I am not worried

How can *any* international, multi-million dollar company claim ignorance of its own stock records? After the Jobs stock option business that went down recently? You don't get rich by being honest, and Jobs has been rich for 20 years.
I bet Apple will now sue every other company that tries to go to the SEC about something like this for stealing their idea.

It's not like Apple is the only company to have done this-- at least 60 companies, including Apple, are being investigated for back-dating stock options so that their executives would get more $$$ from the deal. It was all apparently going on during the dotcom boom period ('97 to '01) when salaries and bonuses where so out of control.

Apple, like other companies, is reporting this now because the SEC has starting investigating and and issuing subpoenas over this type of thing. It'll probably turn out that many more companies did the same thing. Apple is just trying to lessen the fines and penalties that they'll incur. It's a shady practice, and it certainly wasn't an accident, but now that they know the SEC is getting serious about it they've decided to come clean and take the hit, rather than get nailed in an ongoing investigation that would hurt them far worse.

Though I don't subscribe to the theory that there was "intentional" mistatements of earnings, given the number of companies that have revised previous reports, Apple seems a little late to the game. I would question why it has taken so long to find the "irregularities" and to disclose them.

studio34 said:

Though I don't subscribe to the theory that there was "intentional" mistatements of earnings, given the number of companies that have revised previous reports, Apple seems a little late to the game. I would question why it has taken so long to find the "irregularities" and to disclose them.

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It's not that they intentionally mistated their earnings, it's that they didn't properly expense the backdated options at the time when they actually gave them. It seems to me that seeing as Jobs had his backdated options canceled in 2003, that they've known full well that this could be a problem for some time. Now that the SEC is getting serious about it they've decided to clear the slate.

Speaking of stocks and shares...

I'm 20 and have never played the stock market but would like to give it a go.

So how would I go about buying some shares in Apple?

Regards,

Chris. :mac:

Open up an account with an online trader (When I started 4 years ago I signed up with Ameritrade, which is now TDAmeritrade, no problems with them). You will have to deposit however much money you want into the account, then buy the stocks

MrChris said:

Speaking of stocks and shares...

I'm 20 and have never played the stock market but would like to give it a go.

So how would I go about buying some shares in Apple?

Regards,

Chris. :mac:

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Unless your dealing with millions like my dad, you can do as I do and as rpnmonkey41 and use a discount online trading service like TDameritrade. Or if you want to feel more confortable (and pay alot more) you can get a broker.

Apple is being upfront about it - or perhaps they had to come out about it because the public found out about it......

i am sure this is something Apple would have prefered to keep as quiet as possible.

buyandhold.com is very cheap, so is sharebuilder.com except for their selling stock fee.

^^^ wrong post?

karudzo said:

buyandhold.com is very cheap, so is sharebuilder.com except for their selling stock fee.

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I've used Sharebuilder before, not a bad deal.

Technology companies have played fast and loose with stock options for a long time. That kind of thing doesn't fly anymore, and many companies got caught unprepared. Options are such a nebulous thing that most people don't think of them like they do "real" money. Expensing them is a lot harder than balancing a checkbook.

Mathiau said:

Apple is being upfront about it - or perhaps they had to come out about it because the public found out about it......

i am sure this is something Apple would have prefered to keep as quiet as possible.

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There are laws about this sort of thing...if Apple kept it quiet, it would be subject to a fine whenever the truth came out. If Apple actively tried to conceal it, then the executives would be guilty of fraud and subject to jail time.

Thanks for that info, i am really ignorant when it comes to that type of information in terms of there being laws against it not being announced.