Posted on 08/12/2006 7:36:40 PM PDT by glorgau
Letter follows Apple telling regulators it will delay its 10-Q
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Apple Computer Inc. said late Friday that the Nasdaq Stock Market has warned the company its decision to delay filing its most-recent quarterly financial report puts Apple in violation of Nasdaq's stock-listing requirements.
The letter came on the same day Apple officially notified federal securities regulators that it would delay filing its quarterly report, or 10-Q, for the quarter ended July 1, until an outside legal counsel completes an investigation into how the company accounted for employee stock options.
The company reiterated to the Securities and Exchange Commission in Friday's filing what it had already revealed on Aug. 3, when it also said it would restate some past financial results based on an internal inquiry into options granted to executives and other employees between 1997 and 2001. See previous story.
The technology giant said it hasn't determined how big a charge it will take related to the options issue, nor for which periods it will restate results.
"The company is focused on resolving these issues as quickly as possible," Apple said in Friday's SEC filing, which was made before the open of U.S. markets.
In a separate statement released after U.S. markets closed, Apple said it has requested a hearing with a Nasdaq panel on the matter of delisting. Public companies that don't file timely financial reports with the SEC risk having their shares delisted by the Nasdaq.
The maker of Macintosh computers and iPod music players is arguably the most high-profile technology company ensnared in the scandal over the backdating of employee options. The SEC and federal prosecutors in New York and Northern California are investigating dozens of companies over discrepancies between when their options were actually granted and when they were priced.
In some cases, executives reaped immediate financial windfalls from grants that were priced just before huge run-ups in their company's shares. More than 70 companies have said they are conducting internal reviews of their past options practices, and some, like Apple, have said they plan to restate results based on those inquiries.
Apple said on June 29 one of the grants it investigated went to Chief Executive Steve Jobs. That option grant was later canceled and resulted in no financial gain for him. See previous story.
Companies that find evidence that past stock option grants made to executives and other employees were backdated will be required to restate results to reflect higher compensation expenses for the periods in which the options were granted, according to Albert Meyer, an analyst with Bastiat Capital in Plano, Texas.
"If you back-date, you essentially issue in-the-money options and have to account for it as a compensation expense," Meyer said. One-time charges to cover those expenses will then need to be accounted for on the income statements of restated financial reports, thereby reducing profit for the period covered by the restatement.
Confusion about restating the July quarter
Apple's Friday filing with the SEC contained language that was confusing enough to prompt some Wall Street analysts to attempt to clarify the issue in notes written for their clients.
The technology giant said in the filing "there will be significant changes in the results of operations for the quarter ended July 1, 2006 compared to the quarter ended June 25, 2005, including significant increases in the Company's revenue and expenses."
While some interpreted that to mean Apple will restate results for the June quarter in a significant way, analysts said they don't believe there will be any changes to Apple's fiscal third-quarter results.
Instead, because the SEC won't recognize the earnings report Apple filed last month as official until it files its 10-Q, Apple was using that language merely to describe its results for the quarter, one analyst wrote.
"The reference to significantly higher revenues and expenses was merely a qualitative statement of fact, not a signal that results will differ from the recent earnings release," wrote J.P. Morgan analyst Bill Shope, who reiterated his overweight rating on Apple shares.
Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton told MarketWatch in an interview that the phrase "has nothing to do with our internal (options) investigation or the restatements."
Still, when asked whether the company had ruled out restating results for its most recent quarter, Cotton referred to Friday's regulatory filing, which states that Apple "has not determined...which periods may require restatement."
In two cases, federal prosecutors have brought criminal fraud charges against company executives over backdating options.
On Thursday, both the former chief executive officer and the human resources officer at Brocade Communications Inc. (BRCD : 5.20, +0.06, +1.2% ) were indicted for a scheme to backdate stock options. Federal prosecutors said the executives gave employees favorably priced options without recording necessary compensation expenses.
This week, former executives at Comverse Technology Inc. (CMVT :19.80, +0.32, +1.6% ) were also charged with options-related securities fraud.
frame it or sell it on ebay.
Heh, that's enough trolling on my behalf for now. nitey-night!
Steve Jobs will survive this. But Al Gore may not.
Are they saying they're losing money, that they made mistakes, that there was chicanery, what???
Not trying to be a wise guy (I know zip about DEC), but how did they force you to sign non-disclosure agreements?
I think Apple is the distributor for those computers made by Fisher-Price.
Like yourself, my heritage goes way back, too. I actually worked on a daily basis with Macs for probably 7 years or so, in the early 90's. I feel, and yes, that's really subjective, that Apple hasn't really brought anything new to the table since System 7. You compare a Mac from that time period to an equivalent PC, and there was no comparison, Windows 3.1 was a miserable joke in comparison. However, Apple really was leaps and bounds past the competition. But after Jobs took off, and went nowhere fast with the NeXT, which was so far beyond the status quo that nobody "got it" and the NeXT was a commercial flop.
Roll the clock forward to today. Windows is light years beyond the 3.1 days. Apple? Well, they gave up on their own OS and went with a rebranded BSD for the back-end, probably a wise decision in the long run. However, the basics of what you can do with an Apple haven't changed. There is still unto this day not nearly as much software as there is for Windows. The boxes themselves are still a sole-source product with a sole-source pricetag to prove it. They still cater to the hippy-dippy Ultra Lib crowd just as always. I don't know, they seem as if their entire marketing effort amounts to "We're AOL for hardware! Can't figure how to use a PC? Use a Mac!"
If Apple were a car, it would be a Volkswagen.
I don't know where you have been but the Mac is the only platform available today that can run Unix, Linux, Macintosh, AND Windows software... natively. The new Macs, all of them, can run Windows just as easily as they run Macintosh OS X.
That means that the Mac can actually run MORE software than Windows can. You are just demonstrating your ignorance of the Mac platform with your comments.
The boxes themselves are still a sole-source product with a sole-source pricetag to prove it.
Right. Sure.
Apple Mac Pro Workstation, two Intel Xeon® 5150 2.67GHz processors with 1.337GHz front side bus, 2 GB 667MHz DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM (FB-DIMM) memory (RAM upgraded to match lowest memory config of Dell), 250GB 7200 RPM SATA HD, 1400 W PowerSupply, two 10/100/1000 ethernet ports, Superdrive 16X Dual layer (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) burner, four Firewire ports (2 800, 2 400), five USB2 ports, OS X.4.7, bundled software:Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger (includes Spotlight, Dashboard, Mail, iChat AV, Safari, QuickTime, iCal, and other software), iLife ’06 (includes iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, iWeb, GarageBand), Comic Life, Omni Outliner, Boot Camp, Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive, iWork ’06 (30-day trial), FileMaker Pro 8.5 trial ... Base price $2499 plus $200 added for extra Gigabyte of RAM ...The Dell is only $1109
Price $2699.00Dell Precision 690 Workstation, two Intel Xeon® 5150 2.67GHz processors with 1.337GHz front side bus, 2 GB 667MHz DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM (FB-DIMM) memory, 250GB 7200 RPM SATA HD, 1000 W PowerSupply, 1two 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, 16X Dual Layer (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) Burner, ZERO Firewire ports, seven USB2 ports, MS WindowsXP Professional, bundled software ? ... Configured price $4008 less a $200 small business discount ...
Price $3808.00
LOL see #16 and #18
That's an absurd statement. It's Windows that hasn't changed. Windows XP is growing more obsolete every day, and Microsoft is years late getting Longhorn/Vista shipped. When Vista does ship someday, it will be a crappy, bug-ridden imitation of last year's version of Mac OS X - while Apple will be shipping a new version of Mac OS X that Microsoft will spend several more years trying to copy.
"If Apple were a car, it would be a Volkswagen."
No, it would be a Cadillac.
What, via emulation? In that case, I can fire up VMWare and run about any OS on the planet, and thereby any amount of software I want. Oh wait, I can't run the Mac OS, though, since they're pretty uptight about those things. Funny thing is, you don't see a burning interest in running Mac software anyhow. All the Mac people are excited about emulating Windows, though, why? Because there isn't any worthwhile Mac-only software to run! If there was, there wouldn't be any interest in Windows emulation. This has been the story of Apple users for years and years, "Where is the good software?"
And the price quote? I went over to www.pricewatch.com and got tired of wading through hundreds of similar combos, only to realize, wait, I have hundreds of choices here from about as many vendors! And the Mac folks? Sorry, the ONLY manufacturer you'll ever get a box from is Apple! No choice there for you. But hey, if you're happy with having only the choices Apple dictates are fit for you, you be happy and use your Mac.
Add Fraud to your list.
For the record, I'm not an exec; we're not run by a bunch of bleeding heart, liberal hippies either.
Just like Snickers candy bar... it is only good if you eat it... options are only good if they're excercised.
Well done.
"Add Fraud to your list"
Oh yes.
Looks like it. The similarities are glaring.
The Ipod, a shiny object that attracts unwitting folks to a scam.
If you rode WCOM all the way to the bottom in your 401K then there is nobody at fault but you. Bernie didn't control that money, you did.
No need to. Just use FreeBSD.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.