UAFRS Monthly

For companies to succeed, they need a strong workforce of employees. Employees are the ones that actually carry out a business’ daily operations, and as such no business can stay afloat without the right people.

It should come as no surprise then that companies invest a lot in their workforce. For most businesses, labor represents one of its largest expenses. Companies typically set aside 15% to 30% of revenue towards their payroll budget to ensure they are able to attract and retain the best talent they can.

While typical financial statements like the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows provide information about performance that has already happened, many companies take performance monitoring a step further by creating “pro forma” financials.

Leveraging historical data and applying assumptions, pro forma financials provide insight into the future outlook for the business, and also how a business might have looked in the past if “things had been different.”

The process of filing every year is met with dread and resignation from businesses and individuals alike. The U.S. tax code is extremely large and complex. What’s worse, even a small mistake could lead to an audit or fine from the IRS.

For context, tax statutes passed by Congress into law total about 2,652 pages and explain tax regulations in over 1 million words. By comparison, that is longer than the King James Bible, with 788,280 words, and comparable to the entire Harry Potter collection of novels.

In 1993, Quaker Oats bought Snapple for $1.7 billion… about $1 billion higher than what most thought the company was “worth” on Wall Street. Following its previous success with Gatorade, Quaker must have thought it could replicate the formula, leveraging its expertise with supermarkets and retailers to generate great rewards for investors.

However, its efforts failed to materialize. Quaker Oats sold Snapple just a few years later for only $300 million, a massive loss in equity value.

Ames Department Stores serves as a great reminder to investors of the dangers of flawed fair value accounting.

Ames was a discount retailer in the US that filed for bankruptcy in 1990. It closed well over 300 of its stores and fired 26,000 employees in an effort to pay off its creditors.

Last issue, we discussed our financial subsidiary adjustment This adjustment helps rectify the incongruence in balance sheet accounting between operating companies and their bank like
financial subsidiaries

For a bank, its assets are akin to a normal operating company’s liabilities and vice versa This is because traditional loans (which represent liabilities to a retail company, as an example) are actually the bread and butter of how banks conduct business and make profits

Mitsubishi Group is a classic Japanese conglomerate.

Also known as “Keiretsu” in Japanese, it is a series of cross-share holdings that form a complicated corporate structure under a single business group.

It is a great compliment to say something ages like fine wine.

It means that something has gotten better over the years. Over time, fine wine develops a more nuanced and complex flavor that is often thought of as higher quality. Similarly, a person who has “aged like fine wine” has gotten better over the years, often by becoming more dashing in appearance or more well-rounded in personality

Three months ago, in Clay Tokens, we covered the concept of excess cash…

Specifically, we discussed how not all cash is created equal. As Benjamin Graham identified in The Interpretation of Financial Statements in 1937: “there is a tendency to hold more cash than the business needs.”

What does it mean to be “special”?

Many folks typically think of things that imply being “better than” or “greater than” when it comes to something being “special.” Think special events, special promotions, or special athletes…

The primary focus of investors can be summarized by one word: returns.

Namely, investors would love to know how much of a return they will make on the capital they invested in a given investment. Of course, this is all but impossible in practice. Instead, investors often must settle for looking back at the returns they have made.

These three words are used to describe different financial concepts, from a belief that cash is more valuable than other investment tools to an emphasis on cash in analyzing businesses to the importance of cash flow for the overall health of a business.

In our most recent issue, we highlighted how M&A accounting violates the matching principle and misrepresents economic reality by consistently underreporting the profitability of an acquired company. This causes multiperiod distortionsin the acquiring firm’s income statement.

When I teach advanced accounting to up-and-coming future accountants, I have to tell the students to just memorize GAAP rules and do what the standards tell them to do.

Professor Baruch Lev is one of the foremost academic experts when it comes to analyzing the impact of deficiencies in corporate financial reporting.

Last month, we highlighted Warren Buffett and his distaste for GAAP and IFRS accounting standards.

This month, we turn to another all-time great value investor the co-founder of legendary hedge fund Baupost Group, Seth Klarman—for his take on financial reporting deficiencies in general and the focus of this month’s report… inflation or more accurately, currency devaluation

When Warren Buffett talks, his comments are worth listening to. And if you were not already aware, Buffett has said a great deal about problematic accounting standards.

I recently had a wonderful conversation with Ralph Nach. Ralph is a former co-author of the Wiley GAAP Guide. He teaches continuing professional education courses for practicing CPAs on many of the most difficult and complex accounting topics. Ralph was also one of the very first members of the UAFRS Advisory Council for Uniform Accounting.

Whitman built impressive investment results over decades. While he accomplished this feat, Whitman also found time to call out the problems with as-reported financial statements under GAAP.

No industry is free from the inconsistent rules of GAAP accounting that create extensive distortions from economic reality. In this issue, we highlight a chemicals company, a payroll servicer, and a diversified industrial conglomerate. Everything from net earnings to total assets is calculated in ways that seem almost arbitrary under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

Stock-based compensation (SBC) is an accounting headache. Just last year, PwC published a 250+ page report to help its clients navigate its intricacies.