UBS Profit Dips 16% in Q3 Amid Negative Rates

UBS reported a drop in quarterly profit on Tuesday amid headwinds including negative interest rates and muted investment banking activity.The largest Swiss bank said net profit attributable to shareholders fell 16% in the third quarter to $1.049 billion while operating income dropped 6.6% to $7 b...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 22, 2019

SAP Sales Rise 13% on Strong Cloud Growth

SAP shares rose more than 2% on Monday after the enterprise software giant reported strong quarterly results reflecting the growth of its cloud business.For the third quarter, SAP’s total revenue increased 13% to 6.79 billion euros, with cloud revenue up 37% to $1.79 billion and new cloud booking...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 21, 2019

IBM Sales Slump for Fifth Straight Quarter

IBM shares fell more than 5% in after-hours trading Wednesday after the company reported a fifth straight quarter of falling sales despite the first contributions of its Red Hat acquisition.For third quarter, IBM’s sales dropped 3.9% to $18.03 billion, missing analysts’ estimates of $18.22 billio...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 17, 2019

Wells Fargo Profit Falls on Lower Interest Rates

Wells Fargo missed quarterly earnings estimates amid lower interest rates but delivered growth in loans and deposits as it prepares for new leadership.The bank, which is still recovering from its fake-accounts scandal, reported net income of $4.6 billion in the third quarter, down 23% from a year...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 16, 2019

Bridging the Gaps in GAAP

In the Fall of 2011, my son was navigating a treacherous gap in a wall he was scaling during one of his 200 or so missions in Afghanistan’s Helmand Valley (see photo, right). Eight years later, he took the photo below while walking across the Brooklyn Bridge just this past Saturday — ...

By Tony Wayne • Oct. 16, 2019

MGM Strikes Deals for Two Las Vegas Properties

MGM Resorts International and Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust are forming a joint venture that will buy MGM’s Bellagio real estate and lease it back to an MGM Resorts unit, the companies announced.Under the deal, MGM will receive cash proceeds of roughly $4.2 billion and its subsidiary will p...

By Lauren Muskett • Oct. 16, 2019

OECD Takes Aim at Multinational Tax Shelters

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has proposed a radical corporate taxation overhaul to make it harder for multinationals operating across borders to shelter profits.The proposal unveiled Wednesday gives OECD member countries the right to tax a proportion of multinationals...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 9, 2019

Domino’s Misses on Earnings, Launches Buyback

Domino’s Pizza announced another share buyback on Tuesday after reporting lower-than-expected quarterly earnings and same-store sales.CFO Jeff Lawrence said on an earnings call that the pizza delivery giant would repurchase $1 billion shares, bringing total buybacks over the past three years to n...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 8, 2019

Start-Up CFOs: Be Ready to Raise Capital, Recap, or Sell

Being the CFO of a high-growth company can be both exciting and challenging. Business plans change, revenue fluctuates, and markets shift. Yet even with all the uncertainty, managing financial operations at a start-up’s fast pace is something many CFOs find exhilarating.In more traditional busine...

By John McEwan • Oct. 7, 2019

HP to Shed up to 9,000 Jobs in Restructuring

Amid a downturn in its printer business, HP has announced a restructuring plan that will reduce its workforce by as much as 18% over the next three years.HP shares fell 10% on Friday to $16.55 on news that the company will shed between 7,000 and 9,000 jobs from its roughly 55,000 global workforce...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 4, 2019

Costco Shares Drop on 4th Quarter Sales Miss

Costco shares fell in extended trading Thursday after the warehouse retailer reported lower-than-expected sales and slower e-commerce growth.For the fourth quarter, Costco’s revenue rose 7% to $47.5 billion while net income rose to $1.097 billion from $1.043 billion a year ago. Analysts had expec...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 4, 2019

The Link Between Capital Structure and Financial Flexibility

A company’s capital structure — its ratio of debt to the sum of debt and equity market value — is important for assessing the organization’s financial flexibility and ability to access capital in the future.If the company has a high debt-to-equity ratio, for instance, it’s said to be highly lever...

By David McCann • Oct. 3, 2019

Finance Avoids RPA for Financial Reporting

Fewer than a third of finance departments that have deployed robotic process automation have utilized the technology in conjunction with financial reporting, according to Gartner.Gartner studied the use of RPA in finance departments through interviews with more than 150 corporate controllers, chi...

By David McCann • Oct. 2, 2019

Metric of the Month: Return on Invested Capital

October falls in the middle of a busy planning season for many organizations, which is the perfect time for this month’s metric on return on invested capital (ROIC). This measure calculates the amount of gain made on invested capital relative to the cost of investment, which gives an organization...

By Perry D. Wiggins • Oct. 1, 2019

Deals Made During Downturns Create More Value

If there indeed is an economic downturn ahead, what should companies do during it?Perhaps they should acquire another company. At least, that’s what research by Boston Consulting Group seems to suggest. In short, the research found that deals made in a weaker economy are associated with greater s...

By David McCann • Sept. 27, 2019

Pier 1 Shares Plunge as Quarterly Loss Doubles

Pier 1 Imports shares dived in extended trading Wednesday after the struggling home goods retailer posted another big same-store quarterly sales decline and a $100 million loss amid increased clearance activity.For the second quarter, Pier 1’s revenue fell 14.3% to $304.6 million from $355.3 mill...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 26, 2019

Harley-Davidson Unveils New Growth Strategy

Harley-Davidson announced its accelerated growth strategy that will expand its ridership to 4 million riders in the United States by 2027 from 3 million in 2017, but the strategy will require significant investment.The company’s ‘More Roads to Harley-Davidson’ strategy is planning to leverage its...

By Lauren Muskett • Sept. 24, 2019

PwC Fined $7M for Audit Independence Violations

PwC has agreed to pay more than $7.9 million to settle allegations that it improperly performed IT and other non-audit services for audit clients.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said the firm violated auditor independence rules in connection with 19 engagements on behalf of 15 issuers...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 24, 2019

Lorenzo Flores Steps Down As Xilinx CFO

Chipmaker Xilinx is parting ways with CFO Lorenzo Flores as it transitions into a supplier of processing platforms for data centers.Xilinx shares fell 1.6% in extended trading Thursday after the company announced Flores, who has served as finance chief since 2016, was stepping down to “pursue ano...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 20, 2019

Will Saudi Oil Strikes Hamper Supply Chains?

First it was digital disruption. Then it was events like Brexit and trade battles. Now, a new, violent issue has emerged to threaten supply chains around the world.The drone strikes at oil facilities in Saudi Arabia last weekend, which took out 5% of the world’s daily oil production and sent crud...

By David McCann • Sept. 19, 2019

The Zero-Based Mindset

Successfully balancing between increasingly evasive sales growth and earnings performance in the modern business environment would seem to require a finance chief with a magical touch.With evolving demands from stakeholders come evolving business strategies designed to respond to them. In finance...

By Chris Roark and Kris Timmermans • Sept. 18, 2019

Broadcom Beats Estimates, Chip Sales Fall 5%

Broadcom beat analysts’ estimates for the third quarter but delivered cautious full-year guidance amid weak semiconductor demand and trade uncertainty.The chipmaker said it earned an adjusted $5.16 a share as sales rose 9% to $5.52 billion. Analysts had expected earnings of $5.11 a share on sales...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 13, 2019

Oracle Reports Sales Miss, Co-CEO Taking Leave

Oracle shares fell as much as 5.8% in after-hours trading Wednesday after the software giant reported lower-than-expected quarterly sales and said co-CEO Mark Hurd was taking a medical leave of absence.For the first quarter, Oracle had sales of $9.2 billion, flat from the year-ago period and belo...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 12, 2019

Hong Kong’s Stock Exchange Makes $37B Bid for London Stock Exchange

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing made an unsolicited cash and stock bid of $37 billion to purchase its rival London Stock Exchange to combine the companies.If it goes forward, the deal would mark the second largest foreign takeover of a U.K.-listed company, second only to when Japanese pharmaceut...

By Lauren Muskett • Sept. 11, 2019

IRS Aims to Catch Up to Tech Advancements

Recently proposed IRS regulations would significantly affect tax on income from international cloud transactions and electronic transfers of digital content. Accordingly, CFOs should review the structure of agreements involving such transactions and transfers.Issued on Aug. 9, the proposed regula...

By David McCann • Sept. 9, 2019