Tax Departments Are Starving for Technology Investment

While finance teams are busily automating a growing assortment of processes, many tax departments remain on the outside looking in when it comes to technology investment. That should change, according to a new report from Deloitte.Tax departments increasingly need software bots to take over repet...

By David McCann • June 5, 2019

Campbell Soup Tops Q3 Earnings Estimate and Lifts 2019 Outlook

Campbell Soup posted stronger-than-expected third quarter earnings on Wednesday, and boosted its full-year profit outlook.Much of this positive activity is being credited to U.S. snack sales following last year’s $6.1 billion purchase of Snyder’s-Lance.Campbell Soup said adjusted earnings for the...

By Lauren Muskett • June 5, 2019

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Tax policy shifts: What CFOs need to know to stay ahead

Discover how evolving tax policies are creating new opportunities and challenges for CFOs.

By CFO.com staff

Flower Delivery Service FTD Files Bankruptcy

Flower delivery company FTD filed for bankruptcy on Monday, saying its financial performance has wilted under the strain of integrating its acquisition of ProFlowers.The nearly 110-year old company had been reviewing “strategic alternatives” since last year, warning in March that it could go out ...

By Matthew Heller • June 3, 2019

Blackstone Buys GLP Warehouse Properties

Blackstone Group reached an agreement to buy U.S. industrial warehouse properties from Singapore-based logistics provider GLP for $18.7 billion, the companies announced.The portfolio includes about 1,300 properties and 179 million square feet of urban logistics assets. The companies said it was t...

By Lauren Muskett • June 3, 2019

Metric of the Month: Total Cost of Budgeting and Forecasting

Plans, budgets, and forecasts can be some of the most valuable contributions that finance makes to the business. Ideally, they help organizations know what’s coming down the road and remain agile enough to respond to uncertainty and to keep the business moving forward. At the same time, planning,...

By Perry D. Wiggins • June 3, 2019

Brazil’s 0.2% GDP Drop Fans Recession Fears

Brazil’s economy contracted in the first quarter of 2019, fueling fears that the country is heading toward another recession.According to official government data released on Thursday, Brazil’s gross domestic product declined by 0.2% from the previous quarter. It was the first drop in GDP since t...

By Matthew Heller • May 31, 2019

How to Modernize the Treasury Department

Treasury departments can provide advanced value to companies by aiding with planning and meeting goals for efficient operations, innovative credit and cash management, and other market opportunities.Yet traditional treasury departments today are still focused on processing, with a majority of res...

By David McCann • May 31, 2019

J.Jill ‘Disappointed’ with First Quarter Financial Results

J.Jill shares fell 52% Thursday after the women’s apparel brand reported first-quarter profit and sales declines and gave weak guidance.With 283 stores and an e-commerce platform, the retailer reported total net sales for the 13 weeks ended May 4, 2019, were $174.5 million versus $181.5 million f...

By Lauren Muskett • May 30, 2019

Why Terminating a Pension Plan May Be Unaffordable

Put simply, when companies terminate defined benefit pension plans, they’re looking to save money. But: they still may not be able to afford it.How’s that?First, the cost of the termination will typically exceed the book value of plan liabilities by 15% to 35% for non-retirees and 5% to 10% for r...

By David McCann • May 29, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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