Calcbench

Today we have another example of the quirks in non-GAAP reporting courtesy of real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield ($CWK). Like so many other firms these days, Cushman discloses an adjusted financial performance metric — which, in this latest quarter, was actually worse than standard net income. You don’t see that too often. As we documented in our Non-GAAP Adjustment Analysis published earlier this year, most non-GAAP disclosures are higher than traditional net income, but that’s not always the case. Under SEC reporting rules, a company that reports a certain non-GAAP disclosure must (a) use the same calculations for that metric period after period; and (b) keep reporting that metric period after period, until the company has thoughtful, reasonable rationale for discontinuing it. So under the right circumstances, a company could report a non-GAAP metric that paints a less flattering picture of financial performance than standard GAAP disclosures, but you’re stuck reporting that...

Here's a short summary of drug sales for 4 pharmaceutical companies from earnings reports in Q2 '24. Two of the firms reported this morning (July 30th) so the data is fresh.   Included in this small sample are Johnson & Johnson (ticker: JNJ), Pfizer (ticker: PFE), Abbvie (ticker: ABBV) and Merck (ticker: MRK). Using our Excel Add in and our Disclosures query tools, we are able to extract these segments in a flash.   A few noteworthy things.  Drugs that formed a significant portion of revenue in Q2 2024 are  Merck Keytruda (45%) and Gardasil (15%)   J&J  Stelara (13%) and Darzalex (13%)  AbbVie Humira (16%) Skyrizi (16%) Pfizer Elliquis (14%) Time Series of Revenues by Firm / Drug below

This morning (July 29) , McDonalds reported Q2 earnings.  Last week (July 24th), Chipotle Mexican Grill did the same.   Since we have the financial data catchers mitt, we thought we would roll up the sleeves and get to work a little.   First question: 'How did the firms fare?'  A quick as-filed income statement should suffice: MCD: Sales Flat.  Profits Down.  But levels are high meaning they make a lot of Big Macs consistently.     CMG: Sales way up (18.3% YoY) and Profits as measured by Net Income up 33.3% YoY.  The business is objectively smaller than MCD though.  There are other ways to compare these firms and we love to talk about our ability to showcase the tools that allow for that comparison.   Using our earnings press-release toolkit allows us to compare things like Net Profit Margins in real time for these firms.  Like this quarterly since 2010:   In the last 10 plus quarters, McDonald's is 2-3 times more pro...

Another market close at the end of the week, and another update on earnings from the famed Calcbench Earnings Tracker template. This week for your consideration, we have a few interesting splits by corporate size and industry sector. We track these earnings using our Earnings Tracker template, which pulls in financial disclosures as companies file their latest earnings releases with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Earnings Tracker provides an up-to-the minute snapshot of financial performance compared to the year-earlier period. In this Week 2 of second-quarter earnings season, we have 788 firms reporting. The headline numbers are below. First is Figure 1, reporting revenue…  As you can see, several different tales are being told at once here. Large companies (those in the S&P 500) are doing well, with revenue up 2.72 percent if you include financial firms and still up 1.85 percent when you don’t.  Smaller companies outside the S&P 500, however, saw total r...

We always love when Union Pacific Corp. ($UNP) files its quarterly earnings releases, as the freight railroad giant did earlier this week. Why? Because the company reports so many oddball disclosures! For example, did you know that average maximum train length is a thing? It is! And according to Union Pacific’s second-quarter earnings release , its maximum average train length increased by 2 percent from the year-ago period, to an all-time high of 9,544 feet. That’s 1.8 miles long, and we’re pretty sure we got stuck waiting for one of those trains at a rail crossing in upstate New York last month. Anyway, using the nifty Calcbench export-to-Excel capabilities we talk about so much, we even charted out maximum average train length for the last four years. See Figure 1, below. We’re not rail industry analysts so we don’t quite know what to do with this disclosure, other than to marvel at its inherent coolness.  Nor is maximum average rain length the only interesting disclosure Union...

Happy summer Friday, financial analysts everywhere — and what better way to ease into the weekend than with the Calcbench Earnings Tracker and our first look at earnings for Q2 2024? We track these earnings using our Earnings Tracker template, which pulls in financial disclosures as companies file their latest earnings releases with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Earnings Tracker provides an up-to-the minute snapshot of financial performance compared to the year-earlier period. Today is our first look at second-quarter numbers. As of 2:30 pm ET this afternoon, we had data for roughly 110 non-financial companies. The headline numbers are in Figure 1, below. As you can see, revenue is up 1.56 percent compared to second-quarter 2023, and net income is up a whopping 17 percent. Then again, we have so few companies in our sample size so far, it’s unwise to draw any broad conclusions from this data; come back in a few weeks, when we have hundreds of firms’ reports.  We also ...

UnitedHealth Group ($UNH) filed its latest quarterly report on Tuesday, giving us yet another opportunity to review our favorite non-GAAP disclosure, “EBCD” — earnings before cybersecurity disaster!  OK, that’s not really a thing, but given the extent of UnitedHealthcare’s breach earlier this year, it could be. UnitedHealth suffered a devastating ransomware attack in February, when hackers shut down its Change Healthcare subsidiary (acquired in 2022). Since Change Healthcare processes billing and insurance claims for a large swath of the healthcare industry, the attack left pharmacies and hospitals across the United States unable to fill prescriptions, book procedures, and otherwise operate as normal.  Anyway, back to today’s s earnings release for second-quarter 2024 . UnitedHealth reported a total of $98.8 billion in revenue (up 6.4 percent from the year-ago period) and $4.42 billion in net income (down 21.8 percent). The good stuff, however, was in the non-GAAP disclosure...

CFOs, corporate financial departments, and SEC reporting teams can often struggle to know exactly what level of detail you should include in the 10-Q. One useful resource on that issue is, naturally, other filers going through the same process — and one way to find that information is to look through SEC comment letters sent to other filers.  That’s on our mind today because the SEC recently published a comment letter exchange the agency had with Lyft ($LYFT) about how the ride-sharing business discusses cash used in operating activities.  The letters themselves don’t say anything too controversial. Basically, SEC staff told Lyft that they wanted to see more detail about material changes in cash from operating activities, and about how the company plans to meet its cash requirements. Lyft then responded with examples of expanded disclosure on those two points, which the company promised to include in future filings.  Our point is simply that if you, another company, aren...

Financial analysis never sleeps, which is why the Calcbench research team was picking through corporate filings that arrived on the otherwise quiet, post-holiday day of July 5 — and we came across the latest quarterly filing for KB Home ($KBH), one of the largest homebuilders in the country. We fired up our Disclosures & Footnotes tool, and randomly decided to look at KB Home’s debt disclosure. Hoo boy, that perked us right up! Figure 1, below, shows what we found. KB has four notes payable, each for several hundred million dollars, coming due within the next several years. Moreover, those notes have interest rates anywhere from a rather reasonable 4 percent to 7.25 percent, almost high enough to cause a nosebleed.  That alone made us wonder about KB Home’s ability to pay off those debts. Then we kept reading through the footnote, and came to this line at the bottom: As of May 31, 2024, principal payments on our notes payable are due during each year ending November 30 as foll...