Apple Computer has discovered additional evidence of irregularities relating to past stock option grants and will likely need to restate its historical financial statements as a result, the company said on Thursday. In late June, Apple proactively announced that an internal investigation discovered irregularities related to the issuance of certain stock option grants made between 1997 and 2001.
“Oops.”
Sounds like they need to get to work on that spread sheet application (Numbers) to keep track of this crap!
“Ah Shucks, we should have used gnumeric”.
That is all I can say… I am looking at WWDC Announcement though!
i think your right, any adverse effect this has on apple’s stock will be quickly forgotten at WWDC 🙂
well timed apple!!
John Major once said that if you want to keep something secret, announce it in Parliament. If you want to make sure the media will never spill the beans, announce it in Strasbourg.
edit: added a wonderful quote 🙂
Edited 2006-08-04 16:11
Forgotten after WWDC? Probably not. There is simply no way to know what is going to happen when a company restates 4 years worth of accounts, and no way to resolve this quickly. Particularly when the company also does not publish product line profitability numbers, so we cannot really tell what’s going on under the hood.
This may turn out to be nothing, or it may turn out to be huge, but in either case, we will be talking about it long after this WWDC is forgotten.
This may turn out to be nothing, or it may turn out to be huge, but in either case, we will be talking about it long after this WWDC is forgotten.
It probably won’t be that big a problem for the stock. The market rallied toward the close (68.3), stock is at 68.23 in the after market right now; But considering it opened at 67.02 (from yesterday’s close 69.59), and the lowest was 64.96… closing above 68 is surprisingly good. Waiting for the WWDC news obviously 🙂 (and 69.59 was probably a bit high anyway)
Now for the specific problem about the stock options — it’s only stock options, eg we are talking about at most a few millions at most… and with +4Billions in gross profits and excellent products, no much worries. To the contrary, it was probably a good idea to buy aapl today 😉
“politically”, all that comes from a private apple’s inquiry, not from an external one (so we know they are already taking proper actions), and steve jobs doesn’t seat on the compensation board (which decides the stock options attribution). So… lots of noise for nothing ?.. (to be fair, not nothing, but certainly not as big as justifying the price drop)
This has nothing to do with how Apple reports the profits on a given product line. It has nothing to do with how many they have reported as sold or even the $ amounts of the revenue. It is an accounting issue that will affect net profit and (probably) taxes due.
You both may be right: it may be very little. It may not be. There is no way to tell. When companies embark on restating the last four years accounts anything or nothing can happen.
Product line profitability is irrelevant to the options issue. But it would give a greater feeling of confidence in transparency of the reporting. Paraphrasing Oscar Wilde – to have one accounting issue is a misfortune. Two seems uncommonly like carelessness.
HAHA sure…
Shareholders hold a grudge for along time.
Look at TLS in AU.
AWB and AMP
NAB options bungle/fraud still remains strong in thoughts
Things like this do not go out of mind in shareholders only consumers. It is important that apple make strong and productive messures based on the findings.
Na, na, nothing is as funny as those who bought shares in Telstra in the second wave of share offerings *giggles* they’re now worth around 1/2 the amount of which they paid when they bought them *laughs* it just makes me giggle knowing how many people were screwed over by “Honest John” – you think that its going to change? nope.
The only reason why Telstra is being privatisd is this; it needs to be given a complete overhaul, but the only way that is to happen, is for it to be completely weened off the government tit and left to private sector motorvation to slim down the company.
Just look at the amount of people, revenue generated, and compare to, for example Telecom New Zealand; Telstra is a bloated, expensive, ovesized corporation that has all the halmarks of being an ex-government department, right down to its crappy service!
Amen.
I just love being capped at 1.5Mbps because we haven’t caught up with ADSL2+ yet.
Bring on privatisation.
“http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1940“
If AppleInsider is right, the damage MAY be of limted scope. As a fan AND a stockholder, I hope they are right.
BTW: any word about MSFT’s options problems?