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

Report Suggests a Shift in Cost-Reduction Mentality

Companies are no less eager than ever to take out costs. However, the strategic mindset behind cost-reduction efforts has shifted over the past two years, a new report asserts.In Deloitte’s first biennial global cost survey, in 2017, respondents were in “save-to-grow” mode, with companies around ...

By David McCann • April 29, 2019

S&P Questions Tesla’s Profitability Outlook

S&P isn’t buying Tesla’s profitability outlook for the rest of the year, predicting only limited improvement after the automaker sank back into the red in the first quarter.Tesla’s $702 million loss was the fourth-worst since it went public in 2010. In the previous two quarters, it had posted...

By Matthew Heller • April 29, 2019

Amazon Profit Doubles to Record $3.6B in Q1

Amazon reported its lowest growth rate in quarterly revenue since 2015 but profit more than doubled to an all-time record for a quarter, fueled in part by its high-margin cloud computing and advertising businesses.For the first quarter, Amazon’s revenue rose 16.9% to $59.7 billion, enough to matc...

By Matthew Heller • April 26, 2019

Tech Companies to Watch 2019: Behavox

In this third year of CFO’s Tech Companies to Watch, we found a notable shift in the applications being offered by vendors. In every functional area of the companies that made our annual list — process management, recruiting, travel expenses, receivables management, and compliance among them — th...

By Lauren Muskett • April 25, 2019

‘Disappointing’ Quarter Drives Big 3M Stock Drop

3M shares plunged to their worst day in 30 years on Thursday after the industrial conglomerate surprised investors with an earnings miss, lowered guidance, and a plan to lay off 2,000 workers.The stock, a Dow component, fell 13% to $190.72, shaving nearly $13 billion over 3M’ s market capitalizat...

By Matthew Heller • April 25, 2019

For Aflac, Slow Growth Means Extra Cash Flow

Start-up companies are well known for operating in the red during their early growth phases as they spend heavily on sales, marketing, and research & development to establish strong positions in their markets. Then, at some point in their success journey, they may decrease the percentage of r...

By David McCann • April 25, 2019

Facebook Sets Aside $3B for Possible FTC Fine

Facebook reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue but its profit took a hit from a $3 billion charge to cover a possible settlement of a Federal Trade Commission investigation of its privacy practices.The social media giant said on Wednesday that the FTC inquiry — which began in March 2018...

By Matthew Heller • April 25, 2019

Harley Profits Fall, But Beat Estimates

Harley-Davidson reported net income of $127.9 million on revenue of $1.38 billion for the first quarter, down from net income of $174.8 million and consolidated revenue of $1.54 billion a year ago, but the company beat expectations for profit by more than 30 cents per share and upheld its shipmen...

By Lauren Muskett • April 23, 2019

FACT Coalition Calls for Corporate Tax Transparency

The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition is calling on the U.S. Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Financial Accounting Standards Board to require multinationals to disclose corporate tax information on a country-by-country basis.Among the in...

By Vincent Ryan • April 23, 2019

Twitter Shares Jump 15% on Monthly User Surge

Twitter shares rose sharply on Tuesday after the microblogging site reported a surprise increase in monthly active users (MAU) for the last quarter that it will publicly disclose the metric.Monthly active users jumped 9 million, or 2.8%, to 330 million in the first quarter from the previous quart...

By Matthew Heller • April 23, 2019

Private Companies: Beware of SEC Scrutiny

Earlier this month, the SEC and the former CEO of Jumio — a defunct, privately held mobile payments verification startup — agreed to settle fraud charges related to the overstatement of revenue. Executives of private companies should regard the case, and other recent ones like it, as warnings.Nic...

By David McCann • April 22, 2019

Blackstone to Convert from a Partnership to a Corporation

Private-equity firm Blackstone announced it is changing its corporate structure to a corporation from a publicly traded partnership, effective July 1.In an interview on CNBC’s Squawkbox on Thursday, CEO Steve Schwarzman said the change would allow Blackstone to “double the number of people” who a...

By Vincent Ryan • April 19, 2019

U.K. Watchdog Calls for Audit Market Makeover

The U.K.’s competition watchdog has found “deep-seated problems” in the country’s audit market but stopped short of recommending the full, structural makeover of the Big Four accounting firms advocated by lawmakers.PwC, KMPG, Deloitte, and EY sign off on the accounts of 97% of the U.K.’s 350 larg...

By Matthew Heller • April 18, 2019

Wisconsin Governor Calls for New Foxconn Deal

Tony Evers Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers called for the state to renegotiate its contract with Foxconn Technology Group for $4 billion in investment incentives, saying the company was not likely to create the jobs it promised.“Clearly the deal that was struck is no longer in play and so we will b...

By Lauren Muskett • April 18, 2019

PepsiCo Shares Hit Record on Earnings Beat

PepsiCo shares jumped to a record high on Wednesday after the company reported better-than-expected earnings, driven by the performance of its Frito-Lay snacks division.Frito-Lay sales rose 5.5% in the first quarter while Pepsi’s North American beverage sales grew 2%, reflecting in part a 4% pric...

By Matthew Heller • April 17, 2019

IBM Shares Down After Earnings Miss

Shares of IBM were down sharply in midday trading after the company reported mixed earnings results Tuesday.The company’s revenue was down almost 5% year-over-year, with every business segment down or flat, but the company said that cloud revenue growth accelerated in the quarter and was up 10% o...

By Lauren Muskett • April 17, 2019

Netflix Posts Record Quarterly Subscriber Gain

Netflix added a record number of paid streaming customers for a single quarter though it expects subscriber growth to lose some steam from April through June.The streaming entertainment service grew its total subscriber count by 9.6 million to 153.9 million worldwide in the first quarter. Additio...

By Matthew Heller • April 17, 2019

BofA Sees Net Interest Income Growth Slowing

Bank of America reported a second straight record quarterly profit on Tuesday but predicted net interest income growth would decline to 3% this year.Big banks are experiencing pressure on net interest income — the spread between what a lender earns on loans and pays on deposits — as the U.S. Fede...

By Matthew Heller • April 16, 2019

CEO Stock Options Drive Income Smoothing

Is reporting company earnings so as to smooth them out over time really a blameworthy practice?Corporate executives apparently don’t think so, as a large survey of them a few years back found an overwhelming preference for smoothing, for a variety of seemingly good reasons. Yet most other observe...

By David McCann • April 15, 2019

Goldman Shares Dip 3.8% on Q1 Revenue Miss

Goldman Sachs posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Monday but its revenue took a hit amid tough market conditions for its trading business.For the first quarter, the bank generated $2.25 billion of profit, or $5.71 a share, easily beating analysts’ estimates of $4.89 per share. But r...

By Matthew Heller • April 15, 2019

Wells Fargo Shares Dip 3% on Profit Outlook

Wells Fargo delivered a strong earnings report on Friday but its shares tumbled on a reduced net interest income outlook.For the first quarter, the bank reported that net income rose to $5.51 billion, or $1.20 per share, from $4.73 billion, or 96 cents per share, the previous year. Revenue declin...

By Matthew Heller • April 12, 2019

SeaWorld Attorney Charged with Insider Trading

Former SeaWorld attorney Paul Powers agreed on Tuesday to settle charges with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for insider trading. In the complaint, the SEC stated Powers used confidential information that revenues would exceed analyst expectations in the second quarter of 2018 to mak...

By Lauren Muskett • April 10, 2019

Climate Change Reporting: A Catalyst for Change

The following is a speech given on Tuesday, April 2 by Hans Hoogervorst, chair of the International Accounting Standards Board, at the Climate-Related Financial Reporting Conference in Cambridge, U.K. I spent a long time in politics. As a liberal, free-market-oriented politician, I started out be...

By David McCann • April 3, 2019

CAQ Releases Guide to Reviewing Auditors

How much of a role do companies play in ensuring the quality of external audits? A big one, according to the Center for Audit Quality.The public advocacy organization on Tuesday released its updated external auditor assessment tool, which was last published in 2017.In the intro to the 32-page doc...

By Vincent Ryan • April 2, 2019