Money and Finance
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- Bloomberg Videos
David Tepper: Appaloosa's Tepper Says Stock Markets Not in Bubble ... Bill Ackman: Bill Ackman on Herbalife, Fannie, Air Products Related previous post: Oxford Distinguished Speaker Series: Bill Ackman ... Max Levchin: What Is a Disruptive Innovator?...
- Silver Linings: Banks Big And Small Are Embracing Cloud Computing
“I’VE only got one IT guy,” says Segun Akintemi, the chief executive of Renaissance Credit, a Nigerian moneylender that opened for business in October 2012 and signed up about 3,000 customers in its first six months. “Whenever I walk past his...
- Dividend Growth Investing At Work - 2 More Increases
Something I love about dividend growth investing is that each month I get to hear about companies I own deciding to pay me more money in dividends. Just for owning a small portion of the companies. Not going and doing R&D for new products...
- International Business Machines (ibm) Dividend Stock Analysis
I'm finally getting back to posting some stock analyses. For some reason I just didn't have the motivation, I'm not sure if it was a bit of a burn out but I think it was mainly just due to laziness. I don't mind compiling the data...
- Ibm Will Survive And Thrive
IBM is the third stock I added to the Wide Moat Dividend portfolio. Its a company with substantial positives - a 2.4% yield with plenty of room to grow. IBM has a payout ratio of 25% and a five year dividend growth rate of 14.3%. The Return on Equity...
Money and Finance
IBM and others facing the cloudy business of accounting for the cloud
Found via @HowardSchilit.
FORTUNE -- Last week's disclosure that the Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting an investigation into how IBM reports its cloud computing revenue poses more questions than answers. The New York-based tech giant admitted it has been cooperating with the SEC since last May but said little else about the particulars of the case. One thing is clear: It's likely this won't be the last probe into the often inconsistent methods used to account for software-as-a-service products.
The cloud itself isn't the problem -- it's the way it happens to be packaged and sold. Unlike traditional, on-premise software, cloud-based tools are usually paid for via multi-year contracts. Customers are charged a monthly subscription fee, which means a recurring revenue stream that can be tricky to account for because it spans the course of several years (and because, sometimes, customers back out of contracts). This gets especially complicated at large companies that lump cloud-computing sales in with non-cloud products.
"Accounting rules were written when we were all trading goods with each other," says Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora, a billing platform used by many cloud computing companies. "As we move away from a manufacturing economy to a service economy it gets pretty complex."
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Maybe the key excerpt for investors:
According to Cowen & Co.'s Goldmacher, investors should pause before becoming too enamored with subscription-based revenue, however attractive a recurring revenue stream may seem: "... we are concerned that investors are taking false comfort in these models because the income statement and balance sheet can be lagging indicators on the real trajectory of the business," he wrote in a recent report. But Goldmacher is also quick to note that it's unlikely anything nefarious is going on, even if the SEC has reason to launch an investigation. "My belief is that this is just really complicated," says Goldmacher. "The more complicated an undertaking the more likely you are to make a mistake."
- Bloomberg Videos
David Tepper: Appaloosa's Tepper Says Stock Markets Not in Bubble ... Bill Ackman: Bill Ackman on Herbalife, Fannie, Air Products Related previous post: Oxford Distinguished Speaker Series: Bill Ackman ... Max Levchin: What Is a Disruptive Innovator?...
- Silver Linings: Banks Big And Small Are Embracing Cloud Computing
“I’VE only got one IT guy,” says Segun Akintemi, the chief executive of Renaissance Credit, a Nigerian moneylender that opened for business in October 2012 and signed up about 3,000 customers in its first six months. “Whenever I walk past his...
- Dividend Growth Investing At Work - 2 More Increases
Something I love about dividend growth investing is that each month I get to hear about companies I own deciding to pay me more money in dividends. Just for owning a small portion of the companies. Not going and doing R&D for new products...
- International Business Machines (ibm) Dividend Stock Analysis
I'm finally getting back to posting some stock analyses. For some reason I just didn't have the motivation, I'm not sure if it was a bit of a burn out but I think it was mainly just due to laziness. I don't mind compiling the data...
- Ibm Will Survive And Thrive
IBM is the third stock I added to the Wide Moat Dividend portfolio. Its a company with substantial positives - a 2.4% yield with plenty of room to grow. IBM has a payout ratio of 25% and a five year dividend growth rate of 14.3%. The Return on Equity...