One time I disappeared into my bosses locked office and had this conversation:
"I am a little worried about the process we use with regard to GAAP."
Boss "Don't waste your time there because it is only "noise""
"Ok. Just hypothetically speaking what if Ernst & Young got wind of this."
Boss "It would just be a black eye...nothing big"
Luckily, Ernst & Young needs a colonoscopy to find their heads. LOL#LOL
To this day I am not sure if the Boss meant me getting a black eye or our operation.
The company has been called out before for aggressive capital lease accounting. It's a controversial thing in the accounting profession. What is aggressive accounting? It's taking your store and facilities leases and instead of listing them as assets on the balance sheet, which would require a balancing boost in liabilities and/or a hit to owner's equity, the company sweeps these long-term capital investments under the rug and OFF the balance sheet into the footnotes. Instead, the company treats its capital leases as expenses, like paying the electric bill for example. What does this accomplish? MANY believe that it hides the debt. What it clearly does is lower the debt-to-equity ratio, raise the return on assets ratio, and raise the return on equity ratio, all things that make the business look much healthier than it really is. Sharp investors know that management missed an opportunity to sell this business back when the stock was around $67 split-adjusted. Now everyone knows what's going on. The perpetual motion machine is out of solar fuel and it's expected that shares will sputter lower and lower until it's just sold off for the name. Who wants to buy a big pile of obligations, a bunch of fat, lazy incompetent global execs who want to retire and a board that is not rated as independent? I'd rather own shares in a real estate investment trust with vast holdings of Texas real estate paying 7.5% and an index RTF that invests in small companies. NOT grocery retail and certainly not this one.
The stock price has become the only thing important to this company which is a shame.
Yes it is
Fight the man lol
MANY corporations are employing outright fraud with regard to their accounting methods, to support their ridiculously overvalued stock prices.
Don't you know? The entire "Recovery" meme has been one big fraud, start to finish. Loose credit and lowest rates in recorded history, slapped on with trillions in printed fiat paper, and a doubling of the debt in 7 short years.
And Voila! There's your "recovery"!
To the average person, it feels real because they have a job, but it is not. It is a house of cards that is now feeling its first breeze. This will come a shock to pretty much everyone, who is completely financially illiterate.
RVP or VP? Either way here come the @ss Whole Fraud Market minions. Fake people but, wow, what fabulous shoe collections! Again, another screen addicted shill on a sinking ship. After staring at your smartIphone for 10 years this is what we have come to expect...and you would know too!
Fake news........