Unclear IR Communications Sent Share Price Tumbling

It’s been quite a first half-year on the job for Adam Meister, the finance chief at data integration software firm Talend.Since Meister took the post in October 2018, Talend has made a key strategic acquisition, wrapped up its transition from IFRS to U.S. GAAP accounting, and filed its first fina...

By David McCann • May 28, 2019

‘Great’ Tax Season Drives Intuit Earnings Beat

Intuit reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings, reflecting strong tax season demand for its TurboTax software, and raised its outlook for the full year.The company earned an adjusted $5.55 a share on sales of $3.27 billion in the third quarter ended April 30. Analysts had expected earnin...

By Matthew Heller • May 24, 2019

Bernie Sanders Introduces Plans for Wall Street Speculation Tax

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — a 2020 presidential candidate — on Wednesday introduced a tax on Wall Street that aims to stem speculation by targeting trades of stocks, bonds, and derivatives.This tax on Wall Street speculation, also known as a financial transaction tax, is estimated t...

By Lauren Muskett • May 23, 2019

A Company That Gets Managers to Think Like Owners

Varian Medical Systems is the market share leader and an innovator in radiology cancer treatment, but its innovation doesn’t stop at research and development (R&D). Over the last 20 months, the finance and investor relations team, in part, has led the company in transforming business manageme...

By Marwaan Karame • May 21, 2019

JCPenney Reports Steep Drop in First Quarter Sales

Just months after delivering a plan for a turnaround to its investors, JCPenney reported that it has underperformed analysts’ expectations with a sharp drop in sales.The Plano, Texas-based department store chain on Tuesday announced financial results for its fiscal first quarter with a net loss o...

By Lauren Muskett • May 21, 2019

Pinterest Shares Dive on First Public Report

Pinterest delivered a larger-than-expected loss and a disappointing sales outlook in its first quarterly earnings report, sending its stock down more than 15% in after-hours trading Thursday.Through Thursday’s regular trading session, Pinterest’s shares had risen 62% from last month’s initial pub...

By Matthew Heller • May 17, 2019

HPE Confirms Deal to Buy Cray Supercomputers

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) confirmed it has reached a definitive agreement to buy the supercomputer manufacturer Cray for $1.3 billion. HPE will pay $35 per share in cash, a premium of 17.4% to Cray’s last closing price.Cray reported revenue of $456 million in its most recent fiscal year, u...

By Lauren Muskett • May 17, 2019

Walmart Gets Big Sales Boost From E-Commerce

Walmart’s brick-and-mortar stores and its online business both turned in strong quarterly sales growth as the world’s largest retailer continued spending heavily on new technology.For the first quarter, Walmart’s U.S. same-store sales, a key retail metric, rose 3.4% while U.S. e-commerce sales ro...

By Matthew Heller • May 16, 2019

To Prosper, Spend for Growth and Cut Costs Too

The best CFO approaches to cost management deliver up to a 7 percentage-point premium on return on invested capital, according to a Gartner study of the S&P Global 1200 companies.The findings indicate that companies that spend for revenue growth while also proactively cutting costs — an appro...

By David McCann • May 14, 2019

Free-to-Play Games Weigh on Take-Two Sales

Take-Two Interactive Software reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings but its sales guidance fell below analysts’ estimates, fueling concerns about competition from online and free-to-play video games such as Fortnite.For the fourth quarter, the game publisher earned an adjusted 78 cents...

By Matthew Heller • May 14, 2019

Companies Urged to Stay Abreast of Accounting Proposals

Accounting standard setters had been working on the new revenue recognition standard that took effect last year for more than a decade before the final rules were issued in 2014. There were multiple exposure drafts, so companies had ample opportunity to weigh in with any concerns.Much the same wa...

By David McCann • May 13, 2019

Postal Service Loses $2.1B on Flat Revenue

The U.S. Postal Service continued its long string of losses in the second quarter though operating expenses, excluding costs “outside of management’s control,” were basically flat.USPS has been losing money for 12 straight years as electronic mail alternatives continues to eat into its revenue an...

By Matthew Heller • May 10, 2019

CCH Tax Software Outage Leaves Accountants in Limbo

Could your organization live without its tax software for a few days at this time of year? Accounting firms using Wolters Kluwer’s CCH cloud platform found out what it would be like.An outage of CCH Axcess, the cloud-based tax preparation and compliance and workflow management solution, began on ...

By Vincent Ryan • May 10, 2019

New Lease Standard: Comparing IFRS and U.S. GAAP

Financial statement users have long been aware of the hidden leverage that arises from lease obligations, especially in the retail industry. As companies file their first financial results for 2019, financial statement preparers and users alike will finally find these leases brought to light, tha...

By David McCann • May 9, 2019

SEC Approves Audit Exemption for Smaller Firms

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has moved a key step closer to eliminating an auditing requirement for smaller companies as part of its effort to incentivize businesses to use the public capital markets.At its meeting on Thursday, the SEC voted 3-1 to advance a proposed rule that woul...

By Matthew Heller • May 9, 2019

Facebook Co-Founder: Break Up Company

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has called for the company to be broken up by regulators, calling CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s power “unprecedented and un-American.”In an opinion piece in The New York Times, Hughes, who is now co-chairman of the Economic Security Project and a senior adviser at the Roo...

By Lauren Muskett • May 9, 2019

‘Opinion-Shopping’ Compromises Auditor Independence

It’s hardly surprising for corporate executives, particularly those with companies caught in a financial squeeze, to seek an auditor likely to be amenable to their influence.Yet there has been relatively little research — and the evidence has been mixed — on whether “opinion-shopping” is generall...

By David McCann • May 8, 2019

SEC Charges Bring Long Fraud Saga to a Close

On May 3, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT) and its former CEO, Thomas Gutierrez, with multiple violations of the Securities Act. The company had gone bankrupt in 2014, surprising many observers, although there had in fact been prior predictive s...

By David McCann • May 8, 2019

Lyft Posts $1.1B Net Loss, 95% Revenue Increase

In its first quarterly earnings report since going public, Lyft reported an adjusted net loss of $211.5 million but predicted steady progress toward profitability after this year.The ride-hailing company’s net loss for the first quarter was $1.1 billion, reflecting in large part a $894 million ch...

By Matthew Heller • May 8, 2019

Investor Group Petitions for Better Exec Comp Disclosure

As CFO has reported, the Securities and Exchange Commission has grown vigilant in recent years about enforcing rules governing companies’ public use of non-GAAP financial metrics such as “adjusted earnings.”The SEC’s concern is that deviating from the official GAAP definition of earnings — such a...

By David McCann • May 7, 2019

Apple Supplier Accused of Lying About Contract

GT Advanced Technologies and its former CEO have settled allegations that they misled investors about its performance of a contract to supply Apple with sapphire glass for iPhones.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said GT knew by late April 2014 that it had failed to meet quantity, qual...

By Matthew Heller • May 6, 2019

Key to Paring Health Costs: Clinical Testing

CFOs and benefits managers across the nation are listening keenly to Washington lawmakers’ discussions of solutions to high drug prices. Steps that could curb medication costs would certainly help the bottom lines of companies’ health care plans.However, drug costs are not the greatest expense wh...

By David McCann • May 3, 2019

Kellogg CFO to Step Down After Two Years

On the day Kellogg reported a first-quarter earnings drop of 37%, it also announced that CFO Fareed Kahn was stepping down as chief financial officer. The Battle Creek, Michigan-based foods company said only that Kahn was “leaving” the company and would stay on until July 1 to transition the new ...

By Vincent Ryan • May 2, 2019

Apple Posts Record $11.5B in Services Revenue

Apple shares jumped in after-hours trading on Tuesday after its latest earnings report fueled optimism that the company is making progress in finding a way to prosper without blockbuster iPhone sales.Apple reported that revenue for the second quarter fell 5% to $58 billion from a year earlier, wi...

By Matthew Heller • May 1, 2019

GM Posts Earnings Beat, Market Share Slips

General Motors posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Tuesday due in part to strong sales of high-priced pickups and the automaker’s cost-cutting efforts.For the first quarter, GM’s net income after tax increased 93% to $2.1 billion, or $1.48 per share. On an adjusted basis, it earned ...

By Matthew Heller • April 30, 2019