3 ms·

Whichever poster it was the other day saying that this was the optimal time to send out bad news as a company seems to have been astute.

davidw 7y ago
Friday afternoons are generally a time when they'll dump out bad news.
- ChuckMcM 7y ago
  Much better when you have a pandemic going on. A friend of mine who is a CFO told me this sort of thing is used by CFOs in all companies to "clean the balance sheets" of bad news. Basically writing off things and taking losses with the excuse "the <name> disaster has really hit us hard but we expect to emerge stronger than ever." The reason for this strategy is that it is difficult for an aggravated shareholder to prove that the thing they are writing off was their fault. It is a giant get out of jail free card for contradicting any previous guidance or other statements simply "because disaster." As a result, the statements from companies on their Q1 results will be a lot of "we've been hit hard by this disaster" and they will dump a lot of things off their balance sheets that they should have dumped off prior to this, take a hit in their stock price but no one will be "guilty" of causing the stock price hit, "because disaster."
01100011 7y ago
I wonder if companies are going to shuffle the books a bit to push losses to this quarter and the next so they can blame the virus?
icedchai 7y ago
Very astute. You'd think it took a Bill Gates to know that the market is closed for the weekend.
Traster 7y ago
Right, but this isn't just some random guy jumping ship. He's been winding down his role in the company for over a decade and there's a really obvious reason to step down: The stock market crash makes this an important time for Microsoft to have leadership that can actually support the company and Bill Gates' other job is incredibly active in the response to coronavirus. It's very likely that the reason he's stepping down has nothing to do with burying the news at all, it's to do with the fact he actually has limited time and this is a very important time to focus his efforts.

davidw 7y ago

Friday afternoons are generally a time when they'll dump out bad news.

ChuckMcM 7y ago
Much better when you have a pandemic going on. A friend of mine who is a CFO told me this sort of thing is used by CFOs in all companies to "clean the balance sheets" of bad news. Basically writing off things and taking losses with the excuse "the <name> disaster has really hit us hard but we expect to emerge stronger than ever." The reason for this strategy is that it is difficult for an aggravated shareholder to prove that the thing they are writing off was their fault. It is a giant get out of jail free card for contradicting any previous guidance or other statements simply "because disaster." As a result, the statements from companies on their Q1 results will be a lot of "we've been hit hard by this disaster" and they will dump a lot of things off their balance sheets that they should have dumped off prior to this, take a hit in their stock price but no one will be "guilty" of causing the stock price hit, "because disaster."

01100011 7y ago

I wonder if companies are going to shuffle the books a bit to push losses to this quarter and the next so they can blame the virus?

icedchai 7y ago

Very astute. You'd think it took a Bill Gates to know that the market is closed for the weekend.

Traster 7y ago

Right, but this isn't just some random guy jumping ship. He's been winding down his role in the company for over a decade and there's a really obvious reason to step down: The stock market crash makes this an important time for Microsoft to have leadership that can actually support the company and Bill Gates' other job is incredibly active in the response to coronavirus. It's very likely that the reason he's stepping down has nothing to do with burying the news at all, it's to do with the fact he actually has limited time and this is a very important time to focus his efforts.