Income Smoothing

When analysts question a firm’s earnings quality, it raises concerns regarding under or over aggressive accounting practices that may be allowing the firm to manipulate the earnings. Earnings quality is defined as the strength of the current earnings in being used to predict future earnings and cash flows. Since earning quality is indicative of future performance, analysts are more likely to address issues that have substantial impact on the earnings quality. An issue arises when the nature of the earnings is questioned. While permanent earnings are part of normal operations, any irregular, one time earnings can skew the earnings, making the firm look more profitable than it is. This is due to the inability to recreate similar one-time transactions that will give rise to such numbers. Investors prefer predictable

Understandably, there are a variety of ways in which a company can manage their earnings, and if accomplished successfully, the results can be highly profitable. Not all techniques are fraudulent, as effective earnings management is considered good for business and shareholders. Income smoothing is a specific example of permissible earnings management that involves controlling fluctuations in net income to make earnings less variable over a given period of time (Goel & Thakor, 2003). Smoothing is acceptable as long as it adheres to the restrictions of U.S. GAAP, which maintains that all revenues and expenses are accounted for in a defined fashion. There are a lot of incentives in figuring how to effectively smooth income, as substantial value can be created through the successful arrangement of financial transactions. Management is able to make more intelligent decisions with regards to the future of the firm if the earnings are able to match the forecasts. One instance this is seen is when management is faced with the decision to smooth total income or

Such an intense focus has been placed on quarterly earnings as an indication of a company’s success by everyone from analysts to executives that ethics have for the most part been thrown out the window, sacrificed to the all important number, i.e. earnings per share. This is the theory in Alex Berenson’s book “The Number: How the Drive for Quarterly Earnings Corrupted Wall Street and Corporate America.” This number has become part of a game to be played, a figure to be manipulated – beat the number and Wall Street all but throws a parade, miss it and a company’s stock may be abandoned. Take into account the incentives that executives have to beat the number and one can find plenty of reasons to manage earnings.

The Consolidated Operating Margin for April resulted in a gain of $699K or a 5.6% margin. The operating margin variance was favorable by $116K when compared to the budgeted operating margin gain of $583K or 5.0%. The leading indicator for April’s better than budgeted performance was higher than budgeted Patient Revenue and a favorable payor mix.

By using the consolidated income statements, balance sheet and cash flow statement, we can assess the company’s financial position. On the income statement, the company’s operation revenue increased by 4.5% ($393.4 million) from year 2006 while its operating income decreased by $65.1 million in the same period. Without considering the net-cash settlement feature expense recorded in 2007, operating income increased $103.6 million. Even though including the net-cash settlement feature

Microsoft earned more on the dollar of their net income for each dollar of the stockholder's equity.

Companies often try to keep accounting earnings growing at a relatively steady pace in an effort to avoid large swings in earnings from period to period. They also try to manage earnings targets. Reflect on these practices and discuss the following in your discussion post.

They know that growth is lacking and that in order to survive, DMC must alter course now. Senior leadership needs to determine which market segment to pursue, and how this strategy may or may not affect other areas of the company including, but not limited to: Human Resources, Manufacturing and Distribution. Senior leadership must also be aware that any change in strategy will influence I.T. also. While IT is a broad-minded team willing to offer up technical solutions to advance product development and sales, their budget, as well as other departments has been inhibited over the course of current recession and the inconsistency of returns to the company.

The Gross Margin ratio represents the percent of total sales revenue that TCI retains after incurring the direct costs associated with producing the goods and services sold by them. It helps us distinguish, as much as possible, between fixed and variable costs. With a 20%, 15%, or 10% projected increase in sales, for 1996, we calculated TCI’s GM ratio to be 41.85% , and in 1997 to be 41.84%. This means that around 42% of TCI’s sales dollar is available to pay for fixed costs, like its potential long-term debt to MidBank, and to add to profits.

Riordan had a gross profit margin of 17% in 2005 and 19% in 2004 meaning that the company has a net income of 17 cents for every dollar compared to 19 cents in 2004. Looking at the earnings of a company does not tell the whole story and the decrease from 19% to 17% should grab the attention

While costs have increased from $76,750,000 in 2003 to $97,870,000 in 2005, the gross margin have decreased from 33.2% in 2003 to 23.8% in 2005. The company is unfortunately in debt, but they have enough assets to cover it and will allow for the development of new products and information systems.

The Net Profit Margin in 2012 was 10.5% while in 2013 it was 66.6%. This increase in the Net Profit Margin can be attributed to the increase in net profits after taxes despite the fact that there was a slight decrease in revenues.

Operating profit margin figures in the table above show the return from net sales[13]. However profit margin ratios are high enough for the 3 years, there is a fall from 12.86% to 11.26% during 2011-12. Sales revenue increases with a higher rate than gross profit so there is a poor

* Consolidated operating income was $ 503.9 million in fiscal 2008 and operating margin was 4.9% compared to previous year’s $ 1,054 million and 11.2% respectively.

“How do you explain to an intelligent public that it is possible for two companies in the same industry to follow entirely different accounting principles and both get a true and fair audit report?” - M. Lafferty