SEC Intensifies Focus on Non-GAAP Metrics

Complementing its recent report on companies’ increasing usage of non-GAAP metrics, Audit Analytics has released data on the SEC’s enforcement of its guidance for use of the unofficial financial measures.This year, through the first six months the Securities and Exchange Commission sent 1,409 com...

By David McCann • Oct. 23, 2018

U.S. Given ‘C’ Rating In Annual Pension Survey

Mercer released its tenth annual Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index on Monday, finding the Netherlands and Denmark to be the countries most prepared to meet the challenge of ageing populations.The two countries offer “world-class retirement income systems with good benefits,” Mercer stated in ...

By William Sprouse • Oct. 22, 2018

Explore the Trendline➔

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

Breakout Quarter for Venmo Powers PayPal Beat

PayPal reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue amid signs that its Venmo peer-to-peer payment app has turned a corner after struggling to make money.Total payment volume for Venmo rose 78% in the third quarter to roughly $17 billion. That was a fraction of PayPal’s volume of $143 billi...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 19, 2018

SAP Sales Jump 7% on Cloud Business Surge

SAP’s cloud business fueled a 7% jump in quarterly revenue but its shares fell amid concerns over whether its shift to the cloud will crimp profitability.For the third quarter, the enterprise software giant on Thursday said new cloud bookings increased 36% year-over-year while cloud subscriptions...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 18, 2018

Netflix Posts Big Rebound in Subscriber Growth

Netflix shares jumped nearly 11% in extended trading Tuesday after it reported subscriber growth that crushed estimates, with particularly large gains overseas.In the third quarter, the streaming giant added 6.96 million new subscribers, topping the 5.3 million new subscribers it added this time ...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 17, 2018

J&J Gets Boost From Strong Cancer Drug Sales

Johnson & Johnson reported better-than-expected quarterly results on Tuesday as a big jump in sales of its cancer drugs helped offset a weaker performance from its medical-device and consumer businesses.For the third quarter, J&J’s net income rose to $3.93 billion, or $1.44 per share, fro...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 16, 2018

Email Scammers Still Tripping Up Finance Personnel

In an investigative report designed to bring attention to the need to beef up internal accounting controls to protect against fraud, the Securities and Exchange Commission found that the finance departments of publicly held companies continue to fall prey to relatively unsophisticated cyber-scams...

By Vincent Ryan • Oct. 16, 2018

Report Details Ubiquity of Non-GAAP Metrics

It’s no secret that companies have for some time been steadily using more non-GAAP metrics to quantify their financial performance, leading to accusations of earnings management.A new report portrays just how stark the shift toward the unofficial financial measures has been.Audit Analytics looked...

By David McCann • Oct. 15, 2018

Wells Fargo Profit Gets Boost From Cost Cutting

Wells Fargo’s profit jumped 32% in the third quarter, suggesting its cost-cutting efforts are making some headway as it seeks to rebound from its fake accounts scandal.Wells Fargo took encouragement from the bank’s latest quarterly results, which also showed a beat on revenue. “These results refl...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 12, 2018

Flaunting Strong Earnings Damages Stock Price

A company has had a good year, and wants to make sure investors know it. So the headline of its press release announces, “Earnings Per Share up 16.5%” — which, the release reports, is a record.What could be more natural for a company to do than highlight impressive earnings?But, according to new ...

By David McCann • Oct. 9, 2018

Metric of the Month: Cycle Time to Prepare the Financial Forecast

Financial forecasting is a high priority for CFOs, and doing it more efficiently and accurately is an admirable goal. Yet so much has been written about forecast accuracy that it is has become one of the myths of modern finance. When managers chase accuracy, the mere act of forecasting often caus...

By Perry D. Wiggins • Oct. 8, 2018

Costco Warns of Material Weakness in Controls

Costco reported better-than-expected quarterly results but its disclosure of a weakness in its information technology drove its shares down more than 2% in extended trading Thursday.For the fourth quarter, the warehouse shopping leader earned $2.34 per share, an increase of 13.4% on the year-ago ...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 5, 2018

U.S. Factory Orders Continue Growth

U.S. factory orders grew 2.3% in August, according to the latest data released by the Commerce Department. It was the largest monthly increase since September 2017.August’s orders were seen by analysts to have been buoyed by demand for aircraft. Orders for defense aircraft and parts rose 17% in A...

By William Sprouse • Oct. 4, 2018

Is Sustainability Fading from Board Agendas?

In 2016, BDO asked corporate directors whether they believed that disclosures regarding sustainability matters — like corporate social responsibility and the impact of climate change — were important to understanding a company’s business and provided meaningful information to investors.Three quar...

By David McCann • Oct. 1, 2018

KPMG Grows In-House RPA Expertise

For a large finance department where everyone is very busy and working long hours, a dictate to take on responsibility for coding bots to automate hundreds of processes may trigger a bit of resistance.Still, gaining knowledge about robotic process automation programming, maintenance, and tracking...

By David McCann • Oct. 1, 2018

Ex-Salix CFO Fined $1M for Misstating Inventory

The former CFO of Salix Pharmaceuticals has agreed to pay $1 million to settle charges that he lied to analysts and investors by significantly understating the amount of Salix drugs that wholesaler customers held in inventory.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said Adam Derbyhire failed ...

By Matthew Heller • Oct. 1, 2018

Special Report: The New Digital Workforce

In a few years, robotic process automation may very well merge with or be rendered moot by artificial intelligence. But for now RPA, as it is known, commands the attention of enterprises and their finance teams to a degree few relatively new technologies have.Management consulting firm McKinsey s...

By David McCann • Sept. 28, 2018

The CFO Journey: From Archivist to Strategist to … Futurist

As organizations face an onslaught of fast-moving, high-impact technological advances — artificial intelligence and blockchain, to name two — it falls to finance  leaders to lay the groundwork for their companies’ transformations to fully digitized business models.A recent survey conducted by CFO...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Sept. 26, 2018

Michael Kors Agrees to Buy Versace

Michael Kors, the luxury goods maker, has reached a deal to acquire fashion house Gianni Versace for about $2.12 billion, the companies announced.The companies said the deal will allow them to expand the number of stores, grow online sales, and increase geographic diversity. They expected the com...

By William Sprouse • Sept. 25, 2018

Five Firms Fined for Filing Incomplete 10-Qs

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has sanctioned five public companies for filing quarterly reports containing financial statements that had not been reviewed by an independent external auditor.Rule 8-03 of Regulation S-X requires that an issuer must have an independent registered publi...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 24, 2018

Institutional Investors Put Private CFOs in the Public Eye

In 1996, more than 7,400 companies were listed on the major U.S. stock exchanges; today the number is less than half of that. There are many reasons for the decline, but among the more consequential is the emergence of crossover investing.Crossovers are traditional institutional investors that al...

By Jeff Majtyka and Willa McManmon • Sept. 21, 2018

Are Your Portfolio Reviews Timely, Objective, and Thorough?

In October 2017, Honeywell announced not one but two divestments representing close to $7.5 billion in revenues. It planned to execute each via a tax-free spin-off and receive total dividends of $3 billion at closing.For most companies, a single carve-out would be a major undertaking. For Honeywe...

By Jeffrey R. Greene, EY, Jeff Wray, and EY • Sept. 21, 2018

SeaWorld Fined $4M for Hiding ‘Blackfish Effect’

SeaWorld Entertainment and its former chief executive have agreed to pay $5 million to settle charges that they misled investors about the negative impact on its business of a documentary film about alleged mistreatment of orcas at its theme parks.The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said ...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 20, 2018

Under Armour Sets Aside $10M To Cover Job Cuts

Under Armour announced it was cutting about 400 jobs and setting aside $10 million to cover associated severance costs as it looks to increase efficiency.“In our relentless pursuit of running a more operationally excellent company, we continue to make difficult decisions to ensure we are best pos...

By William Sprouse • Sept. 20, 2018

Oracle Shares Dip on Another Revenue Miss

Oracle shares fell more than 4% in after-hours trading Monday as another quarterly revenue miss raised investor concerns over the company’s shift to cloud computing.For the first quarter, the database software giant earned an adjusted 71 cents per share on revenue of $9.19 billion, up 1% on the y...

By Matthew Heller • Sept. 18, 2018