Capital Punishment Must Be Put To Death Essay -- Capital Punishment, De

The death penalty, otherwise called capital punishment, has been around for a considerable length of time. Like all components of present day society, capital punishment has developed through the span of numerous years. At first, capital punishment was controlled by a regal court or government through merciless stoning. From that point forward, the guillotine, noose, hot seat, and [currently] deadly infusion have all been devices made to oversee capital punishment here in the United States. Before the demonstration of really finishing the criminal’s life is performed the person in question looks out for death row over the span of any court procedures. In America, death row is the term given to the segment of a jail held for prisoners anticipating preliminary concerning capital punishment. The term â€Å"death row† is metaphorical. Because of broad court procedures, people waiting for capital punishment may anticipate preliminary or condemning for quite a long time or ye ars. It is extremely unlikely to decide to what extent a detainee will remain waiting for capital punishment. Be that as it may, research has demonstrated that broad timeframes waiting for capital punishment brings down inmates’ mental limits and capacities, and weakens their physical wellbeing at disturbing rates. Detainees waiting for capital punishment have nobody to comfort them, to think about them, or to visit them. Jack Alderman is the longest serving death row American detainee with more than thirty-three years before his execution. In the province of Georgia on September 16, 2008 Alderman was executed by deadly infusion. He was sentenced as far as it matters for him in the homicide of his better half Barbara Alderman. In spite of the fact that the â€Å"U.S. Incomparable Court proclaimed capital punishment unconstitutional† (Swarns 1 of 3), the issue has returned to preliminary and reestablished. Capital punishment is legitimate talk that depends on elevated f eelings and vengeance. The â€Å"justice† framework that determin... ... Works Cited Hawkins, Steven W. â€Å"It is Immoral and Ineffective†. World and I Sept. 2002: 247 General OneFile. Web. 1 Nov. 2011. â€Å"Death Penalty is infringement of human Rights: L:aws are not Meant to Punish Anyone however to Bring Change.† DNA (Daily News and Analysis). 11 Oct. 2009. General OneFile. Web. 1 Nov. 2011 Lafevere, Patricia. â€Å"Group Urges Legislator to Scrap Death Penalty. (Nation)†. National Catholic Reporter 28 Dec. 2001 General OneFile. Web. 1 Nov. 2011. Swarns, Christina. â€Å"The Uneven Scale of Capital Justice: How Race and Class Affect Who Ends Up on Death Row†. The American Prospect. 15.7 (2004): A14+. Hurricane Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 1 Nov. 2011 â€Å"Top 10 Pros and Cons: Should the Death Penalty be Allowed?† deathpenalty.procon.org N.p. n.d. Web. 3 Nov. 2011

Crude Oil Refining or Petroleum Product Importation Which Is Economical for Nigeria free essay sample

Unrefined petroleum REFINING OR PETROLEUM PRODUCTS IMPORTATION: WHICH IS ECONOMICAL FOR NIGERIA? Unique: One of the most pivotal difficulties confronting Nigeria is having the option to meet the vitality need of the vitality hungry masses; the exponential populace development makes it considerably all the more testing. The methodology received to addressing this need has affected seriously on the economy of the country as thought about in the year monetary figures. This can be credited to her decision of net merchant of oil based goods status to the considerably more financial local refining choice. This paper investigations the best monetary alternative between refining unrefined petroleum and bringing in the items in Nigeria, toward the end making likely recommendations. Chapter by chapter list ABBRECIATIONS 1. NTRODUCTION. 4 2. Raw petroleum REFINING AND PETROLEUM IMPORTATION IN NIGERIA 5 2. 1 Overview 5 2. Difficulties of Petroleum Product Refining in Nigeria 6 3. Unrefined petroleum REFINING AND PETROLEUM PRODUCTS ECONOMICS .. 8 3. 1 The Economics of Crude oil Refining .. 8 3. 2 The Economics of Petroleum Products.. 9 4. Raw petroleum REFINING, PETROLEUM PRODUCTS IMPORTATION AND THE ECONOMY. . 0 5. End 11 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 13 ABBREVIATIONS BPSD Barrels for each Stream Day B/D Barrels every Day CBN Central Bank of Nigeria GDP Gross Domestic Product NNPC Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation NPRC Nigerian Petroleum Refining Company PHRC Port Harcourt Refinery Company 1. Presentation The job of unrefined petroleum stays key among the vitality sources, consequently we need to in any case live with the outcomes that are related with it, one of which is efficient. This clearly is an angle no nation, merchant and exporter have had the option to survive, however its effect on certain nations is not exactly in others. Nigeria is certainly one of those nations whose economy has been fantastically affected, incidentally however, a main raw petroleum maker and exporter on the planet. Be that as it may, this isn't to remove rough oil’s colossal commitment to the Nigerian large scale economy throughout the years it holds influence. The disclosure of oil in Nigeria was believed to be a major rest to the developing vitality gracefully challenges confronting her and to bring efficient additions, particularly as the cost of oil has frequently been on the expansion. Thus, ought to have made colossal aggregates of cash from it. Unexpectedly, this isn't to be, as oil abruptly took sparkle off the up to this point significant wellsprings of the country’s GDP. Areas like horticulture and assembling went incurable, making Nigeria a mono-economy, with oil being the backbone of the economy. It gives 95% of outside trade income and about 80% of government budgetary revenues[1]. The Nigeria economy paves the way for the schemes of the instability of amazingly defenseless outer stuns, especially the change of world oil advertise costs, and the ensuing expansions that portray it the vast majority of the occasions. With the creation of 229,008,126 barrels of raw petroleum and condensates expanded in the second from last quarter of 2010 with a normal of 2. 49 million barrels for each day of household creation as of late, four treatment facilities of 445,000 b/d refining limit, the issue of fulfilling local oil need ought to have been considerably tended to. Be that as it may, with the 0 †15% refining limit in 2009[2], which is frequently the situation throughout the years, importation turned into the main accessible other option. Subsequently, Nigeria however a main exporter of raw petroleum on the planet is likewise, unexpectedly, a net shipper of oil based goods. This paper is separated into four parts; section 2 ganders at raw petroleum refining in Nigeria, offering a diagram and difficulties that stands up to it. In part 3, raw petroleum refining and oil based commodities financial aspects is analyzed and section 4 glances at the ramifications of both unrefined petroleum refining and importation vis a †vis the economy. The part 5 finishes up the paper with barely any recommendations regarding what the best monetary choice ought to be in fulfilling the oil based commodities need in Nigeria. 2. Raw petroleum REFINING IN NIGERIA 2. 1OVERVIEW The oil based commodities devoured in Nigeria had been imported from processing plants abroad; this proceeded even two or three years after the revelation of unrefined petroleum in a business amount in the nation. In any case, as the interest for the items expanded and with the accessibility of the feedstock, the two Multinationals working in the nation at that point considered it to be a reasonable business to set up processing plant that would serve the household request. This lead to the 50/50 joint endeavor refining organization between Shell Darcy Petroleum Company and British Petroleum called the Nigerian Petroleum Refining Company (NPRC) in 1960. The development of the processing plant took two years to finish; by 1965 it started activity at an introduced refining limit of 38,000 bpsd[3] to refine neighborhood rough into five oil based commodities. It was situated at Alesaâ€Eleme, close to Port Harcourt, a few kilometers from the raw petroleum creation area. So as to fulfill the regularly expanding need for the items, the treatment facility was deâ€bottlenecked to build its creation limit from the underlying 38,000 bpsd to 60,000 bpsd. Running as a private substance, the organization had the option to run productively, gainfully and met the omestic item utilization request. In 1970, the Federal procured and paid for a 60 percent value share in all private worldwide organizations working in the Upstream and Downstream areas of the Petroleum Industry in the country[4], NPRC comprehensive. In spite of been the significant investor, the Federal Government permitted NPRC to work without obstruction. It was just spoken to by its own partnership, the Nigerian National Oil Corporation (NNOC), on which the offers were contributed on to speak to it at the executive gatherings of NPRC. Thus, the organization was monetarily gainful, all around kept up and ran effectively. A pronouncement in 1977 brought forth the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), which was later to choose the Chairman of NPRC, and afterward gained the staying 40 percent stake in NPRC. This basically made the NPRC a full Government substance under the Refinery Division of the NNPC, headed by a senior supervisor. The name was changed to NNPC Refinery, Alesaâ€Eleme, presently headed by an overseeing executive and having another administration structure. It was under the senior supervisor of NNPC Refinery Division at the base camp. An entirely Government manufactured Refinery started activity in 1978, after a 30â€month development. It was situated at Warri, and had an introduced refining limit of 100,000 b/d. In any case, was de †bottlenecked in 1985 to have an absolute limit of125, 000 b/d. The Warri Refinery was basically worked to process unrefined petroleum items and to increase the value of a portion of the treatment facility results, for example, propylene rich stock and empty oil[5]. Before long, in 1980, another processing plant, the Kaduna Refinery went ahead stream. It was intended to adapt to the consistently developing interest for oil based goods, particularly in the Northern pivot of the nation. The treatment facility comprised of two streams, 50, 000 b/d fuel units and 50, 000 b/d lubes, Asphalt plants. It was intended to create 3,857mt/d of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), 1,686mt/d of Kerosene, 3,000mt/d of Automotive Gas Oil (AGO), 1,796mt/d of Asphalt, 91mt/d of LAB, 657mt/d of Base Oils, 620mt/d of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), 2,100mt/d of Fuel Oil. The current items pipeline connecting Warri Refinery to Kaduna was changed over to siphon unrefined oils for flexibly to the new Kaduna Refinery. Once more, similar to the past treatment facilities, the fuel segment of Kaduna Refinery was de-bottlenecked from the 50, 000 b/d to 60, 000 b/d. This carried the Kaduna Refinery to generally speaking 110, 000 b/d capacity[6]. The fourth and last processing plant was another grassroots treatment facility, nearby the current Port Harcourt Refinery, with an introduce limit of 150, 000 bpsd. With this, Nigeria all out introduced refining limit is 445, 000b/d, which was initially worked to serve both the residential and worldwide oil based good interest. Sadly, the reason for these treatment facilities were fleeting, serving just for two or three years before each started to encounter different man-made difficulties that made them cost focuses rather than the initially expected financially gainful focuses. The consistently developing household item requests were no more met, as intense shortage turned into a typical marvel. This drove, tragically to the arrival of high inclination of oil based good importation so as to meet the vitality need of the country. 2. 2 CHALLENGES OF PETROLEUM PRODUCT REFINING IN NIGERIA The Nigerian state-claimed four treatment facilities have experienced, and still experience a few man-made difficulties that have made it to a greater degree an obligation to the nation than an advantage. One of the issues that diminished the processing plants to cost focuses is administration. Quickly NNPC assumed control over the running of the main processing plant, organization hushed the business societies that cause a business to flourish. Several marks would need to be attached on a letter trying to fix or secure working materials. These superfluously postpone support and effect the productive running of the processing plants. Likewise, being completely heavily influenced by Government, all the assets for running the processing plants would need to originate from Government coffers. This occasioned delays and by and large inadequate subsidizing. Working capital particularly intended to secure the required extra parts, synthetics and all other fundamental things for tasks was not prospective, subsequently prompting the proceeds with breakdown regularly experienced in the different processing plants. The suggested 24 three years ordinary industry Turnaround Maintenance (TAM) was scarcely done[7]. It took years, far over the suggested time in the middle of for TAM at the different processing plants. The outcomes were disappointments, mileage of the hardware, visit shutdowns and complete non activities. Effectiveness of the refining business is with the end goal that necessities all around prepared labor. In any case, the majority of the ref

Paralanguage, proxemics, haptics, chronemics sample

Paralanguage, proxemics, haptics, chronemics sample Whats non-verbal communication? Each day we communicate with people; we solve problems, express our emotions, ask others to do something, etc. But we communicate not only by the language; our body also participates in the process. The scientist A. Mehrabian came to the point that our voice messages without any intonation have an impact of just 7%. Another 93% are voice intonation (38%) and non-verbal signals (55%). There are 7 classes of non-verbal language: Paralanguage studies vocal qualities of our voice. We can say about the emotional condition of person through their voice tempo, pitch and rhythm. Its very easy to define if the person is angry, glad or sad just by listening to their voice. Proxemics is a studying that defines how human organize their home, space, and workplaces. This science has 3 main areas: territory, space and distance. Haptics uses touching instead of talking. This is a sort of tactile communication which is called as the most primeval method of communication between people. In our world there are many cultures that support touching when some dont. Chronemics explains how people feel the concept and the value of time. According to this tool, we can organize our time and have reactions when needed. Different people perceive tome differently; for some people it could be measured, wasted, planned, saved and bought, but for other cultures its impossible to plan things so far because they believe God will always lead them to the right place. Artefacts can bring us information about peoples personality. We can recognize the human culture by clothes they wear, for example, we can be sure that if a man wears kimono, hes Japanese, and if we see a woman with hijab, shes Muslim. Kinesics include such non-verbal signals (we can send them through gestures, posture, facial expressions, and eye gaze). With the help of our body we send signals to others people, mostly with moving our hands and facial expressions. The environment also contains information about people, we need only to look thoroughly and decrypt this signals correctly. The way how we decorate our flat, such things as colors, things, materials, temperature, and light have an impact on people. We know that a lot of stores use some environment strategies to put products on the shelves. They place childrens products lower so our kids can see and take them easily, and tons of products like chocolate bars and chewing gums are always placed close to exits where bored people stay in line, so theyd definitely grab something. The main functions of the non-verbal communication Accenting â€" with our gestures, we try to emphasize the feeling we express during communication. Moderating â€" this function acts vice versa of accenting. When we reduce people attention to the message we said, so as a result, other person may feel hard to understand. Complementing â€" duplicates the accenting and helps us to emphasize our message with gestures. Substituting â€" according to this function, people replace words with non-verbal signals, like facial expression and gestures. Contradicting â€" its when things we tell disagree with our non-verbal signals. It may happen if the person wants to confuse listeners or when they try to hide a lie. Regulating â€" when you listen another person, you send to them non-verbal messages that force to talk faster, slowly, or stop. Repeating â€" when you need to strengthen your message. When you said something at start and there was no response, you use facial expressions or gestures to repeat the message we said in non-verbal way. Deceiving â€" when people lie, their facial emotions can inform us about it. Its very hard to control facial muscles if you want to deceive people, especially those who are familiar with the language of gestures.

Teach Reading With Word Families

An emphasis on sounding out words with isolated phonemes often leads students to dread reading and think of decoding as some sort of mystical power. Children naturally look for patterns in things, so to make reading easier, teach them to search for predictable patterns in words. When a student knows the word cat, he can pick out the pattern with mat, sat, fat, etc.   Teaching patterns through word families— rhyming words—facilitates fluency, giving students more self-confidence and a willingness to use prior knowledge to decode new words. When students can recognize the patterns in word families, they can quickly write/name members of the family and use those patterns to nail down more words. Using Word Families Flash cards, and thrill and drill work to a certain extent, but providing your students with a variety of activities keeps them engaged and increases the likelihood that they will generalize the skills they acquire. Rather than using worksheets that can turn students with disabilities off (demanding the use of fine motor skills), try art projects and games to introduce word families. Art Projects Artistic word sorts with seasonal themes capture kids imaginations and use their enthusiasm for a favorite holiday to introduce and reinforce word families. Paper Bags and Word Families:  Print a variety of related words, then ask your students to cut them apart and put them in bags labeled with the corresponding word families. Turn them into trick or treat bags with crayons or cutouts (or buy some at the dollar store) and use them as a centerpiece in your classroom before Halloween.  Or draw Santas sack for Christmas, and label them with a word family. Then instruct students to sort words written on presents cut from construction paper into the appropriate sacks.   Art Project Sorts:  Draw or print Easter baskets and label each with a word family. Ask students to write associated words on Easter egg cutouts, then glue them to the corresponding basket. Display the word family baskets on the wall. Christmas Presents:  Wrap tissue boxes in Christmas paper, leaving the opening at the top exposed. Draw or print Christmas tree ornaments shapes and write words on each one. Ask the students to cut and decorate the ornaments, then drop them into the proper gift box. Games Games engage students, encourage them to interact appropriately with their peers, and give them an entertaining platform on which to build skills.   Build Bingo cards with words from a word family, then call out the words until someone fills all of their squares. Occasionally insert a word that doesnt belong in that particular family and see if your students can identify it. You can include a free space on the Bingo cards, but dont allow students to use it for a word that doesnt belong to that family. Word ladders use the same idea. Following the pattern of Bingo, a caller reads the words and the players cover steps on their word ladders. The first student to cover all of the words on the ladder wins.

The Athletes With Autism Center Of North Mississippi ( Acnm )

Our first speaker for SW 325 The Helping Professional in Health Settings class was Sharon Boudreaux. Sharon has a Master of Arts in Teaching of special education. She focused on Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) for teaching children with autism and other forms of developmental setbacks. Sharon is currently the Director of Education Outreach at the Autism Center of North Mississippi (ACNM). The ACNM, which Sharon helped in creating and growing, provides educational and behavioral services to families and schools to help support children with autism spectrum disorders, developmental delays, learning difficulties, and challenging behaviors. The ACNM offers a multitude of services. Such services may include parent counseling, skill assessments, ABA therapy, services for schools, and parent and teacher training. Autism is a disorder that I seem to hear more about every day. I hear about it on the television news, in news articles online, and even personal blogs that I read. It seems that e veryone has some knowledge of autism and most people know someone personally that it affects. As far as my own personal knowledge and experience of the disorder, I learned it at camp. I have volunteered many years for at Camp Tik-A-Witha. This camp provides a week long session for children with special needs (mental and physical handicaps) called Elizabeth Gwin Session. While volunteering at camp, I have seen children with blindness, Cerebral Palsy, Down syndrome, and autism. Each child with

Tamil Media Industry Free Essays

POST_ GRADUATION PROGRAMME IN PLANNING AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP_ {draw:frame} Submitted by .G. Raja Saravanan (09)-F1 Vasanth. We will write a custom essay sample on Tamil Media Industry or any similar topic only for you Order Now G (39)-F1 .G. Alfa Bhandari (03)-F2 Ramya Santhanagopalan (30)-F2 BATCH – PGP/SS/2008 -2010 UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF TO WHOMSOEVER IT MAY CONCERN Yours truly, (*Prof. K. *Sashi Rao) Chennai ACKNOWLEDGEMENT We also take privilege in honoring our institution IIPM for allowing us to carry out our project in our area of interest. We thank Raj Network, Sun Network, Star Vijay and Jaya Network for giving us this opportunity. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all those who helped us in getting the useful inputs which has gone a long way to increase our knowledge. We would be failing in our duty if we do not thank our parents and friends without whose well wishes, this project might not have become a success. Table of Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY INTRODUCTION ABOUT STUDY The Study deal with three key areas of focus: (1) An analysis of how the mass media informally educate their audiences through their descriptions and presentations of significant information. 2) The results of a series of interviews with a theoretical sample of people that explores how they describe themselves and how they perceive the quality of information being provided and also they were asked to respond about their perception on different channels. Thus, resulting in analysis of how effective they are in terms of attracting and satisfying to the need of their viewers. 3) Strategies Adopted Challenges faced by Channels for successful establishment. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY: To study the consumers attitude towards the Raj Network To analyze the customer preference towards Raj Network. To study about how to help Raj Network to increase its Revenue. To study about how further strategies and investment could be followed to improve the Raj Network. SCOPE OF THE STUDY: This study is confined to Chennai. Further study can be made in other cities also. This study may help the company to find out about the attitude of the Raj Network. The findings of this study may help the company to implement proper strategies that would attract more viewers (audiences). COMPANY PROFILE It is being telecasted in 135 countries RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Research methodology underlines the various steps involved by the researcher in systematically solving the problem with the objective of determining various facts. The major purpose of analytical research is to analyze the state affaires as it exists at present. Analytical research includes survey and in-depth analysis of variables. The research plan calls for gathering primary and secondary data. The Sampling Method adopted for the present study is Simple Random Sampling METHODS OF DATA COLLECTION Primary Data Secondary Data SECONDARY DATA DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Table 1 The number of *hours a respondent watching television in a day {draw:frame} _From the above table it can be inferred that nearly half (46%) of the respondents watch television for 3 to 5 hours a day and the least population of about 8% spend time for watching television more than 5 hours a day. _ Table-2 The time slot preferred by respondents to watch television {draw:frame} _It can be inferred from the abo ve table that, 7 P. M to 10 P. M is the peak hours for watching television and with very less respondents being interested to watch television early morning and late night after 10 P. M which covers only 5%. _ Table-3 The respondents preference towards various programmes telecasted on Television {draw:frame} Table -4 The number of respondents watching various Tamil Channels {draw:frame} Table -5 The rating of various Tamil channels according to the preference of respondents Table-6 The perception of respondents to add more variety of programmes to the Raj NETWORK {draw:frame} Table-7 The attitude of respondents towards of watching Raj NETWORK {draw:frame} From the above table it can be inferred that _the only 15% of the respondents watch RAJ NETWORK daily and most of the viewers, covering about 26% are not very specific in watching RAJ NETWORK. Table-8 The respondents watching various Raj Network Channels {draw:frame} _The above table shows that only 33% out of 24 respondents watch RAJ NETWORK whereas RAJ VISTA viewers are almost negligible covering just 4% of the total viewership_. Table-9 The viewers feedback on the various parameters of Raj Network {draw:frame} {draw:frame} {draw:frame} {draw:f rame} {draw:frame} FINDINGS The survey revealed that Sun Network and Vijay TV is the main competitor of the Raj Network in Chennai. Most of the viewers prefer to watch the Mega Serials and Reality shows. People are also interested in Vijay TV’s innovative programs People watch Raj TV only when they surf the channels. Regarding Raj Network’s Performance, viewers gave different opinions. Regarding the quality factors of Raj Network (News Channel) most of the viewers had opinion that the news readers and reporters don’t have excellent personality and excellent interpersonal skills. SUGGESTIONS Raj TV can improve their technology standard. They can do some innovative programs to gain the new viewers and lost viewers. Promote information contribution from the people like sharing amateur video footage on public interest. Add more discussions on local issues regarding the welfare of the society. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY The scope of the study restricted to only few areas. Subscribers may not give an accurate data. Busy nature of the respondents. Sample size limited to 150 Respondent’s bias towards certain entertainment channels. Lack of response from customers resistance was yet another factor that damped the spirit of the researchers. CONCLUSION It is clear that Sun Network and Star Vijay are the leaders in the Tamil Channels. Raj Network has to introduce more innovative programmes. Raj Network has to improve the picture and sound clarity to become as competitive as other Tamil Channels. Raj Network should target the Tamil audience as a whole, knowing their preferences. BIBILIOGRAPHY WEBSITES www. sunnetwork. org www. rajtvnet. in www. jayanetwork. in www. vijay. indya. com www. tamindia. com www. indiantelevision. com APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE *Do you have a NETWORK*? Yes b) No Yes b) No *For how many hours in a day, do you watch NETWORK*.? *When do you watch NETWORK*. generally? Which Tamil channels do you watch? Others _ Which programmers you watch most and regularly? Amongst the following channels which program you like the most? Kindly rank the Tamil channels according to your preference. Others (please specify) What do you like or dislike about the following channels? * How often you watch Raj NETWORK*.? Which Raj network channels you watch? Kindly rank Raj Network channels according to your preference. Raj Vista [ ] *How would you rate Raj NETWORK* on the following parameters? Kindly tick the appropriate box *Do you think Raj NETWORK* needs to add more Variety to its existing set of Programmes? Your suggestions about Raj NETWORK Name (Optional): Mother Tongue: Age Group (Tick the appropriate one) Competitors Profiles MAJOR BRANDS IN THE CHENNAI TELEVISION MARKET: Sun Network Jaya Network Raj Network Star Vijay Mr Kalanithi Maran, Chairman and Managing Director of the Sun TV Network Limited. SunTV Network’s programming is a mixed bag. All the channels have a wholesome blend of †¢ Films †¢ Film-Based Shows †¢ Superhit serials †¢ NEWS Capsules †¢ Talk shows †¢ Children’s hours †¢ Women Show. {draw:frame} Sun Network is being telecasted in Asia South Africa Australia Europe USA Canada It is being telecasted in more than 150 countries JAYA NETWORK J. Jayalalithya,*( Former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu )* MD, Chairman and Managing Director of the *Jaya *Network Limited. {draw:frame} The Network runs a number of popular serials presented by some of the best names in South Indian films today. These in combination with a number of popular chat shows and game shows give the network an edge with the viewers. Tamil Channels: Jaya TV, Jaya Max, Jaya news Jaya Plus Jaya Network is being telecasted in Australia New Zealand STAR VIJAY It is a popular Indian entertainment channel broadcasting in Tamil. The channel is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. It is best known for serving its viewers with a mix of content, not limited to mega serials/daily soaps like other Tamil channels. The main reason of success of STAR Vijay is its share of reality shows. Reality shows were first introduced to the audiences by STAR Vijay Star Vijay is being telecasted in Sri Lanka US Canada Secondary Data of Raj TV Raj Television defers expansion plans The Rs150-200 crore investment for launch of 12 regional channels has been put on hold for 12-18 months Vidhya Sivaramakrishnan Chennai: Media and broadcast company Raj Television Network Ltd has delayed plans to launch 12 regional channels and buy a Tamil newspaper by another 12-18 months, as the company waits for the economy to revive to raise funds, two top executives said. The Chennai-based broadcaster, which raised Rs52. 81 crore in an initial public offering in February 2007, had proposed investing Rs150-200 crore for the launches, with part of the funds coming from private equity firms. These plans are now deferred because of the current market conditions, M. Raajhendran, managing director of Raj Television, said in a recent meeting. Raj TV is already struggling with thin audience ratings in a crowded regional television market. According to TAM Media Research Pvt. Ltd, a viewership rating firm, mmands a 96% share, while Raj Digital Plus has the remaining viewership, TAM data shows. Raj TV currently runs four television channels in Tamil and one each in Kannada and Telugu, primarily in the music, news and general entertainment categories. Of the proposed channels, for which the company already has licences, three would be in Malayalam and two each in Kannada and Telugu. It is yet to decide on the other five channels. Within a span of one-and-a-half years, the global markets will also be good and we will raise funds,† Raajhendran said. â€Å"We are going slow. † Prakash Dharmarajan, Chennai president of advertising firm Ogilvy and Mathpwer, said Raj TV cannot depend solely on new channels to improve its business. â€Å"It (Raj TV’s success in other states) would entirely depend on their progra mming content. Is it easy? It is not. At the end of the day, people watch programmes, not channels,† he said. On the company’s print plans, promoter and whole-time director M. Ravindran said that though the company is in talks with a few people, a deal is not likely immediately. â€Å"We want to buy out some established print player, but it will take some time,† he said, without elaborating. Raj TV has since released two of the four movies it has produced so far, investing Rs23 crore. They made profits of 10-15% on an average, Ravindran said, but declined details. The studio and office complex, too, needs another year to be ready, he added. Raj Television’s revenue in fiscal 2008-09 increased to Rs62. 41 crore from Rs58. 69 crore in the previous year, but fell way short of its targeted 40-50% revenue growth. Net profit for the year ended 31 March fell to Rs3. 72 crore, from Rs13. 46 crore earlier. MUMBAI: The Sun Network has hit back at Raj TV’s claims of having cornered the number two position in Tamil Nadu. MUMBAI: Raj TV seems to be in no mood to give up its claim as the second most popular channel in Tamil Nadu. A few months ago, the channel had cited TAM data to indicate that it was the number two channel after Sun TV. The credit to this, Raj gave to its Friday night blockbuster movies. However, the claim had sparked off a scramble for the slot. Eight months down the line, the big fight continues. Pointing to a survey initiated by The Hindu and conducted by TNS Mode (the fourth largest market information group in the world), Raj TV has again asserted its number two position in Chennai. This, of course, means that Raj is the most preferred channel after the undisputed leader Sun TV and its sibling KTV. The TNS poll was conducted in Chennai among 230 men and women. According to the survey, while a major chunk (77 per cent) respondents claimed to be loyal viewers of Sun TV and 5 per cent watched KTV, Raj was the hot favourite among four per cent television viewers. Of the rest, viewership for Vijay TV and Sumangali Cable Vision (which also belongs to the Sun TV stable) was two per cent each. The other channels – including Jaya TV – put together figures for only 10 per cent viewership, Raj claims. The survey indicated that 26 per cent respondents watched television for one to two hours. Only 13 per cent people said they watched the channel for more than four hours. Raj TV backed its claim to popularity with another significant aspect that the TNS survey revealed. According to the survey, Raj TV is the only channel besides Sun, whose daily serial ranks among the top five most popular shows in Chennai. The survey shows that Raj’s Geethanjali is the fourth most popular serial in the metro. The number one serial Metti Oli, number two Annamalai, number three Kungumam and number five Appa are all aired on Sun. IREDATO Card Hello, I bought a Card through my relative as per advice of RAJ TV Sales personal in the month of June 09. The same card was personally hand carried to Australia. Upon arrival, i called up raj tv as per their advice that the card needs to be activated and that they require the decoder box number As per the advice again, i forwarded the box number. RAJ TV again came up with an email as below Dear Siva, Please send us your Receiving Box Number starting with 045 or 027 ( 11 digit number ) to activate the cards. Thanks, S. Swaminathan. Mob:092445 03555. I was then told that the card supplied was un-suitable and should be used only with RAJ TV supplied decoder box. How in the world can RAJ TV supply a card withouth any prior purchase details of a customer of a RJA TV Supplied Decoder BOX After insistant follow up by my self, I am still to get the correct card. Very Disappointed with RAJ TV and its Sales Person How to cite Tamil Media Industry, Essays

Learn to Play the Earnings Game Essay Example

Learn to Play the Earnings Game Essay Learn to Play the Earnings Game (and Wall Street Will Love You) The pressure to report smooth, ever higher earnings has never been fiercer. You dont want to miss the consensus estimate by a pennyand you dont have to. By Justin Fox In January, for the 41st time in the 42 quarters since it went public, Microsoft reported earnings that met or beat Wall Street estimates The 36 brokerage analysts who make the estimates were, as a group, quite happy about this the 57 cents per share announced by the software giant was above their consensus of 51 cents, but not so far above as to make them look stupid. Investors were happy too, bidding the already high-priced shares of the company up 4% the first trading day after the announcement. In short, for yet another quarter, Microsoft had kept its comfortable spot in the innermost sphere of corporate paradise. This is what chief executives and chief financial officers dream of: quarter after quarter after blessed quarter of not disappointing Wall Street. Sure, they dream about other things too mega-mergers, blockbuster new products, global domination. But the simplest, most visible, most merciless measure of corporate success in the 1990s has become this one: did you make your earnings last quarter? This is new. Executives of public companies have always strived to live up to investors expectations, and keeping earnings rising smoothly and predictably has long been seen as the surest way to do that. We will write a custom essay sample on Learn to Play the Earnings Game specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Learn to Play the Earnings Game specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Learn to Play the Earnings Game specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer But its only in the past decade, with the rise to prominence of the consensus earnings estimates compiled first in the early 1970s by I/B/E/S (it stands for Institutional Brokers Estimate System) and now also by competitors Zacks, First Call and Nelsons, that those expectations have become so explicit. Possibly as a result, companies are doing a better job of hitting their targets: for an unprecedented 16 consecutive quarters, more SP 500 companies have beat the consensus earnings estimates than missed them. Microsofts prodigious record of beating expectations is due in large part to the companys prodigious growth, from annual revenues of $198 million at the time of its IPO in 1986 to more than $9 billion now. It also helps that it dominates its industry. But even the Microsofts of the business world have a few tricks up their sleeve. The most obvious is to manage earnings. Managing earnings has a pejorative, slightly sleazy ring to it, but even at the most respected of companies accounting and business decisions are regularly made with smoothing or temporarily boosting earnings in mind. Not all are as up front about it as General Electric, where executives say openly that they dont think their company would be as popular with investors if its profits werent so consistent and predictable. But neither can it be a complete coincidence that of the top ten companies on Fortunes 1997 Most Admired list, sevenCoca-Cola, Merck, Microsoft, Johnson Johnson, Intel, Pfizer, and Procter and Gamblehave missed fewer than five quarters in the past five years, according to I/B/E/S (and two of the other three dont have any earnings estimates to meet. Meeting the estimates is made easier by the fact that theyre not set in a vacuum-analysts rely heavily on guidance from companies to form their forecasts, and companies have in recent years figured out that it pays to guide the analysts to a lower rather than a higher number. At least partly as a result of this expectational interplay, the price of missing a quarter has risen sharply, particularly among high priced growth stocks. In the growth stock fraternity, missing by a penny now implies the height of corporate boneheadedness that is, if you couldnt find that extra penny to keep Wall Street happy, then your company must really be in trouble, and since missing by a 1 penny is already going to send your stock plummeting, youre better off missing by a dime or two and saving those earnings for the next quarter. Microsoft missed by a penny once back in 1988, when such behavior was not yet considered unbearable gauche. Nowadays its executives treat analysts to a constant patter of cautionary and even downbeat words about the future that the analysts say is a combination of genuine paranoia and astute expectations management. After a typically grim presentation by CEO Bill Gates and sales chief Steve Ballmer at an analysts meeting two years ago, Goldman Sacks analyst Rick Sherlund ran into the pair outside and said, Congratulations. You guys scared the hell out of people. Their response? They gave each other a high-five, Sherlund recalls. But Microsoft, unlike some companies less attuned to the rules of this game, also lets analysts know when theyre too pessimistic. Thats what CFO Mike brown did, along with the usual warnings about slower growth ahead, during his regular quarterly conference call after the January 17 earnings release. He told the hundreds of analysts, money managers, and journalists listening in that earnings would be more than a nickel, less than a dime higher than predicted for the current quarter, and another penny higher in the next. How did he know this? That involves something that looks a lot like earnings managementalthough not of the sort that provokes penalties from the Securities and Exchange Commission or nasty newspaper articles about inflated profits. Starting around the unveiling of Windows 95 in August 1995, Microsoft has followed a uniquely conservative How the pros do it: method of accounting for the Plan ahead: Time store openings or asset sales to keep software it shipsdeferring earnings rising smoothly. In most cases, this is earnings recognition of large chunks of management at its least controversial. The master of this is revenue from a product until long General Electric. after the product is sold. The Call it a sale: Madly ship products during the final days of a reasoning is that when weak quarter, or hold off if the quarters in the bag. Theres somebody buys software in leeway in revenue recognition too! Tech companies often 1996, theyre also buying the book sales aggressively to boost profits, but Microsoft is right to upgrades and customer support in 1997 and 1998. If it now demonstrating the virtues of belated recognition. hadnt been for the new Capitalize it: Usually its pretty clear what costs you accounting technique, the capitalize and which you expense. But there are gray areascompany would have had to -software RD is oneand you can get creative about the report a sharp rise in profits in length of time an asset should be depreciated. America the latter half of 1995, then a Online was, until it stopped in October, a noted aggressive sharp drop in the first half of capitalizer. 996 a turn of events that might Write it off: Take a big bath and charge a few hundred have sent its stock price reeling million in restructuring costs, and meeting future earnings instead of the smoothly rising targets will be easier. earnings that it did post. By the end of 1996, Microsoft had taken Use your reserves: Build them up for product returns, bad in $1. 1 billion in unearned loans, and insurance losses; drain them down to bolster revenue that it had yet to earnings when business sags. Outsiders say this is one of recognize on its income the secrets of GEs success, but the company says thats statements. Because of this, just not true. they know what theyve got in the bag from one quarter to the next, says Marshall Senk, a Robertson Stephens analyst who follows the company. Which led him to conclude that Microsoft does a better job of leveraging accounting I would almost say its a competitive weapon than anybody else in the industry. Microsoft treasurer Greg Maffei doesnt like this interpretation. Im a financial officer of this company, and I would be in deep doo-doo with the SEC if that was what was driving our revenue recognition policies, he says. Our revenue recognition policies are driven by GAAP. That isnt quite true. In fact, GAAP-the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles companies follow in preparing financial statementsmay in this area be driven by Microsoft, Virtually no other software company does its accounting the way Microsoft does, but standards setters, egged on by the industry leader, are starting to push in that direction. Thats how GAAP works. Its constantly changing and evolving, particularly in businesses that havent been around for long. This is only natural, but it can be maddening for people trying to understand what a companys reported earnings really mean. With industries that havent been in the market before, you tend to see a lot of monkey business because accountants, even if well intentioned dont know what the standards are, says Martin Fridson, high-yield debt strategist at Merrill Lynch and a financial statement analysis guru. Underwriters of small companies and people who make a living doing IPOs are very conscious of the markets inability to see what the correct measures are. Add that confusion to the general cacophony of accounting quirks and judgment calls in financial statements, and you begin to realize that earnings are nothing but a vague, approximate measure anyw ay. One of modern accountings guiding principles is that of matching revenues and expenses over time. Thats why the cost of building a factory that will be churning out cars for 20 years gets expensed over those 20 years, not when the money is actually spent. But such matching requires making all sorts of guesses and estimates about the future. These judgments how much to set aside for potential loan losses, what rate of return to expect on a pension fund, over how many years to spread out the cost of a factory make earnings a better reflection of the long-term economic health of a company. They also provide ample room for managers to fudge. This is why financial analysts and money managers are supposed to know how to look beyond a companys bottom line to find the true economic value in its balance sheet or cash flow statement or, best of all the footnotes to its financial statements. In the bull market of the past 15 years, however, analytic rigor hasnt always been required to make good stock picks. Nobodys paying attention says Robert Olstein, who in 1970 co-authored an influential newsletter called the Quality of Earnings Report and now runs the $140 million Olstein Financial Alert fund. If Microsoft is the archetype of a hugely successful company trying to tone its earnings down so people dont get their expectations too high, Boston Chicken bespeaks an altogether different and more common phenomenon. It is a business that isnt successful yet, but has used accounting to help convince investors that it already is, or at least will be soon. This has enabled it to raise more than $800 million in stock and convertible debt offerings, money which has been essential not only to the companys rapid growth from 175 Boston Chicken restaurants when it went public in one of the decades hottest IPOs in November 1993 to 1,100 restaurants (rechristened Boston Markets) and 325 Einstein Brothers and Noahs bagel stores today but to its very survival. Thats because, economically speaking, Boston Chicken is still a big money loser, as probably can be expected of a startup restaurant chain. All the losses, however, have been incurred by financed area developers, or FADs, which is Boston Chicken lingo for large-scale franchisees that act a lot like subsidiaries but arent. If they were, their losses would have to lie reported on Boston Chickens income statement (they are instead disclosed, on an annual basis only, deep in the text of the companys SEC filings). The FADs get 75% of their startup capital in loans from Boston Chicken, and with that money they pay the company the royalties, franchise fees, and interest that allow it to report ever-rising profits. Once the restaurants start making money, Boston Chicken exercises its right to convert the loans into equity, officially dubbing the FADs subsidiaries and allowing their profits to flow to its bottom line. Thats the plan, at least, as outlined with somewhat more delicacy in the companys 1993 annual report. And so far it has worked. Sure, business publications have printed nasty articles about the company, accounting professors have warned their students about it, and short sellers have lined up in droves to place bets that its stock price will crash. But Boston Chickens stock price has more than held its own. Part of investors sanguinity has to do with the track record of the two former Blockbuster Entertainment bigwigs who run it, CEO Scott Beck and President Saad Nadhir, and the belief that America really is hungry for takeout chicken, ham, and meat loaf. But it sure doesnt hurt, analysts and money managers say, that not only is Boston Chicken able to report earnings every quarter, but those earnings have so far never failed to meet or surpass analysts expectationseven though those analysts all know that the earnings in no significant way reflect how the company is doing. Its a very smart strategy, says Michael Moe, a growth stock strategist at Montgomery Securities. It has made enormous amounts of capital available to them at an attractive price that most companies can only dream of. Boston Chicken CFO Mark Stephens says his company was structured not to please Wall Street but to provide flexibility and motivate its franchisees. But he acknowledges that a byproduct of where we are wit h the structure is that we have a public entity with an earnings complexion that is attractive. He adds: Its like sausage. I love the product; just dont show me how its made. Another company that has used aggressive accounting to raise money is America Online. AOLs practice of capitalizing and writing off over two years the cost of those ubiquitous free disks and ads it used to lure members was highly controversial and was abandoned in October. But for years it allowed the company to post earnings most of the time instead of losses, which helped it to raise more than $350 million on the stock market. Says Wharton School accounting professor Richard Sloan, referring to both Boston Chicken and AOL: They just view accounting as another marketing tool that they should use to try and promote their ideas. Boston Chicken and America Online are extreme cases. So is Microsoft. The mass of companies lead lives somewhere in between. When they manage earnings, they do it simply to smooth the ups and downs of business life, and of course to meet those Wall Street earnings estimates. Is there evidence of widespread earnings management? You bet. Looking at 17 years of I/B/E/S data on more than 1,000 companies, Jeff Payne of the University of Mississippi and Sean Robb of Canadas Wilfrid Laurier University found an unmistakable pattern of using accruals (i. e. , judgment calls) to manage earnings upward if they were below the analysts consensus and a somewhat less pronounced trend of managing them downward if they were above the consensus. General Electric, a company whose name invariably comes up when you ask Wall Streeters about earnings management, says it does what it does because the stock market demands it. We think consistency of earnings and no surprises is very important for us, says Dennis Dammerman, the companys CFO. Were a very complex, diverse company that no one from the outside looking in can reasonably be expected to understand in complete detail; so our story to the investing world is, we have a lot of diverse businesses, and when you put them all together they produce consistent, reliable earnings growth. And if something inconsistent comes along say a one-time gain from selling off a factory we have a pretty consistent record of saying, Okay, were going to take these large gains and offset them with discretionary decisions, with restructurings. These tactics have helped GE meet or beat expectations every quarter but one in the past five years, and they certainly havent hurt it among investors, even skeptical ones. They are using all sorts of techniques to smooth earnings, says Howard Schilit, whose Center for Financial Research and Analysis keeps institutional investors posted on companies earnings numbers may be hiding business troubles. If I wrote that to my clients, there would be a big yawn. Another investor favorite that produces awfully smooth earnings is Coca-Cola, which in the third quarter of last year took advantage of $520 million in one-time gains from a settlement with the IRS and the sale of some bottling operations to recognize $500 million in supposedly one-time hits. One of those hits, $200 million used to reduce the inventories of soft drink concentrate at bott ling companies, was explained as a move to free up bottlers capital but was seen as an admission by Coke that it had been shipping concentrate early to artificially boost earnings. That hurt the companys stock price for a few months, but by taking the charge Coke gave itself the option of using inventory buildup at its bottlers to pad profits later. When they pull it out in 1998 or 1999 to keep up their 19% or 20% earnings growth, everyone will have forgotten, says Boy Burry, who follows Coke for Oppenheimer Co. Will everyone really forget? If financial markets are in fact efficient, economic reality will in the long run win out over accounting games. But the long run can seem awfully far away when youve got a posse of analysts breathing down your neck every three months. Many corporate executives also seem to think investors take earnings numbers at face value; they write outraged letters to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, accountings top rule-making body, whenever it proposes a change that might reduce reported earnings. They obviously dont believe in efficient markets, says Neel Foster, a FASB member and former treasurer of Compaq Computer. Academic evidence shows that generally, accounting changes dont result in changes in stock prices. But it also shows that people that make greater disclosures generally have a lower cost of capital. They dont believe that either. Even this doesnt explain why some companies seem to persist in managing earnings in the face of Wall Street disbelief. Food maker H. J. Heinz grew rapidly during the 1980s but has since needed repeated asset sales and other special items to keep earnings steadyand its stock has lagged. Last June the company announced quarterly earnings of 45 cents a share but failed to mention that four of those cents came from the sale of a magazine and two pet food brands. It was immaterial, a company spokesman says now, but it nevertheless infuriated some analysts, who found out only when they received the annual report a month later It didnt help the stock price either, although the stock later bounced back on rumors of a major restructuring. What might motivate such corporate behavior? One answer is money. High-level executives like to get paid a lot, and it so happens that many bonus plans including the one at Heinzare built around meeting earnings targets. The rise of performance related It so happens†¦ that many bonuses has taken earnings tweaking to new heights, say some executive bonus plans are market watchers. Theres no reliable measure of such activity, but built around meeting one rough gauge, comparing profits reported to the Internal earnings targets. Revenue Service by U. S. orporations with profits reported to shareholders (the measure that counts for bonuses) by companies on the SP 500, gives a clue. It shows some wild relative swings in SP earnings in the late 1980s and early 1990s, probably a result of big corporations using one time charges to pay for restructuring costs like plant closures. This write-off binge ended in 1994. Which could mean either that earnings quality is getting better or that companies are coasting to ever-higher earnin gs now because they hid ongoing costs back then. While theres no conclusive proof that managing earnings is on the rise, it is undeniable that the game is being played more aggressively than ever. This isnt necessarily bad. The good side of what a lot of people call the game of managing expectations is that companies realize that they have to give better guidance to the market as to what their prospects are, says Ed Keon, senior vice president for marketing at I/B/E/S. The downside of giving better guidance-apart from the hours of valuable top management time that it eats up is that the investors most interested in the estimates are not exactly the well-run corporations best friend. They are the momentum guys mutual fund managers and hedge fund jockeys and individual investors who jump on the bandwagon when a companys earnings growth is accelerating and beating the analysts estimates, and jump off the second it misses a quarter. When it stops, they sell you cannot break this algorithm, says a resigned Eric Benhamou, chief executive of 3Com Corp. which lost $7 billion in market value in a matter of weeks this year as it became known that its earnings for the quarter ended February 25 would nor not meet analysts expectations. The moral of the story: Unless youre a trader, ignore the short-term kabuki that the companies and the analysts perform for each other, but educate yourself about the accounting games that companies play. If enough investors did, it could mean that the smartest earnings and expectations management strategy of the 2000s will be dont bother. Learn to Play the Earnings Game Essay Example Learn to Play the Earnings Game Essay Learn to Play the Earnings Game (and Wall Street Will Love You) The pressure to report smooth, ever higher earnings has never been fiercer. You dont want to miss the consensus estimate by a pennyand you dont have to. By Justin Fox In January, for the 41st time in the 42 quarters since it went public, Microsoft reported earnings that met or beat Wall Street estimates The 36 brokerage analysts who make the estimates were, as a group, quite happy about this the 57 cents per share announced by the software giant was above their consensus of 51 cents, but not so far above as to make them look stupid.Investors were happy too, bidding the already high-priced shares of the company up 4% the first trading day after the announcement. In short, for yet another quarter, Microsoft had kept its comfortable spot in the innermost sphere of corporate paradise. This is what chief executives and chief financial officers dream of: quarter after quarter after blessed quarter of not disappointing Wall Street.Sure, they dream about other things too mega-mergers, blockbuster new products, global domination. But the simplest, most visible, most merciless measure of corporate success in the 1990s has become this one: did you make your earnings last quarter? This is new. Executives of public companies have always strived to live up to investors expectations, and keeping earnings rising smoothly and predictably has long been seen as the surest way to do that.But its only in the past decade, with the rise to prominence of the consensus earnings estimates compiled first in the early 1970s by I/B/E/S (it stands for Institutional Brokers Estimate System) and now also by competitors Zacks, First Call and Nelsons, that those expectatio ns have become so explicit. Possibly as a result, companies are doing a better job of hitting their targets: for an unprecedented 16 consecutive quarters, more SP 500 companies have beat the consensus earnings estimates than missed them.Microsofts prodigious record of beating expectations is due in large part to the companys prodigious growth, from annual revenues of $198 million at the time of its IPO in 1986 to more than $9 billion now. It also helps that it dominates its industry. But even the Microsofts of the business world have a few tricks up their sleeve. The most obvious is to manage earnings. Managing earnings has a pejorative, slightly sleazy ring to it, but even at the most respected of companies accounting and business decisions are regularly made with smoothing or temporarily boosting earnings in mind.Not all are as up front about it as General Electric, where executives say openly that they dont think their company would be as popular with investors if its profits wer ent so consistent and predictable. But neither can it be a complete coincidence that of the top ten companies on Fortunes 1997 Most Admired list, sevenCoca-Cola, Merck, Microsoft, Johnson Johnson, Intel, Pfizer, and Procter and Gamblehave missed fewer than five quarters in the past five years, according to I/B/E/S (and two of the other three dont have any earnings estimates to meet.Meeting the estimates is made easier by the fact that theyre not set in a vacuum-analysts rely heavily on guidance from companies to form their forecasts, and companies have in recent years figured out that it pays to guide the analysts to a lower rather than a higher number. At least partly as a result of this expectational interplay, the price of missing a quarter has risen sharply, particularly among high priced growth stocks.In the growth stock fraternity, missing by a penny now implies the height of corporate boneheadedness that is, if you couldnt find that extra penny to keep Wall Street happy, th en your company must really be in trouble, and since missing by a 1 penny is already going to send your stock plummeting, youre better off missing by a dime or two and saving those earnings for the next quarter. Microsoft missed by a penny once back in 1988, when such behavior was not yet considered unbearable gauche.Nowadays its executives treat analysts to a constant patter of cautionary and even downbeat words about the future that the analysts say is a combination of genuine paranoia and astute expectations management. After a typically grim presentation by CEO Bill Gates and sales chief Steve Ballmer at an analysts meeting two years ago, Goldman Sacks analyst Rick Sherlund ran into the pair outside and said, Congratulations. You guys scared the hell out of people. Their response? They gave each other a high-five, Sherlund recalls.But Microsoft, unlike some companies less attuned to the rules of this game, also lets analysts know when theyre too pessimistic. Thats what CFO Mik e brown did, along with the usual warnings about slower growth ahead, during his regular quarterly conference call after the January 17 earnings release. He told the hundreds of analysts, money managers, and journalists listening in that earnings would be more than a nickel, less than a dime higher than predicted for the current quarter, and another penny higher in the next.How did he know this? That involves something that looks a lot like earnings managementalthough not of the sort that provokes penalties from the Securities and Exchange Commission or nasty newspaper articles about inflated profits. Starting around the unveiling of Windows 95 in August 1995, Microsoft has followed a uniquely conservative How the pros do it: method of accounting for the Plan ahead: Time store openings or asset sales to keep software it shipsdeferring earnings rising smoothly.In most cases, this is earnings recognition of large chunks of management at its least controversial. The master of this is r evenue from a product until long General Electric. after the product is sold. The Call it a sale: Madly ship products during the final days of a reasoning is that when weak quarter, or hold off if the quarters in the bag. Theres somebody buys software in leeway in revenue recognition too! Tech companies often 1996, theyre also buying the book sales aggressively to boost profits, but Microsoft is right to upgrades and customer support in 1997 and 1998.If it now demonstrating the virtues of belated recognition. hadnt been for the new Capitalize it: Usually its pretty clear what costs you accounting technique, the capitalize and which you expense. But there are gray areascompany would have had to -software RD is oneand you can get creative about the report a sharp rise in profits in length of time an asset should be depreciated. America the latter half of 1995, then a Online was, until it stopped in October, a noted aggressive sharp drop in the first half of capitalizer. 996 a turn of events that might Write it off: Take a big bath and charge a few hundred have sent its stock price reeling million in restructuring costs, and meeting future earnings instead of the smoothly rising targets will be easier. earnings that it did post. By the end of 1996, Microsoft had taken Use your reserves: Build them up for product returns, bad in $1. 1 billion in unearned loans, and insurance losses; drain them down to bolster revenue that it had yet to earnings when business sags. Outsiders say this is one of recognize on its income the secrets of GEs success, but the company says thats statements. Because of this, just not true. they know what theyve got in the bag from one quarter to the next, says Marshall Senk, a Robertson Stephens analyst who follows the company. Which led him to conclude that Microsoft does a better job of leveraging accounting I would almost say its a competitive weapon than anybody else in the industry. Microsoft treasurer Greg Maffei doesnt like this interpretation. Im a financial officer of this company, and I would be in deep doo-doo with the SEC if that was what was driving our revenue recognition policies, he says. Our revenue recognition policies are driven by GAAP. That isnt quite true. In fact, GAAP-the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles companies follow in preparing financial statementsmay in this area be driven by Microsoft, Virtually no other software company does its accounting the way Microsoft does, but standards setters, egged on by the industry leader, are starting to push in that direction. Thats how GAAP works. Its constantly changing and evolving, particularly in businesses that havent been around for long. This is only natural, but it can be maddening for people trying to understand what a companys reported earnings really mean. With industries that havent been in the market before, you tend to see a lot of monkey business because accountants, even if well intentioned dont know what the standards are, sa ys Martin Fridson, high-yield debt strategist at Merrill Lynch and a financial statement analysis guru. Underwriters of small companies and people who make a living doing IPOs are very conscious of the markets inability to see what the correct measures are. Add that confusion to the general cacophony of accounting quirks and judgment calls in financial statements, and you begin to realize that earnings are nothing but a vague, approximate measure anyway.One of modern accountings guiding principles is that of matching revenues and expenses over time. Thats why the cost of building a factory that will be churning out cars for 20 years gets expensed over those 20 years, not when the money is actually spent. But such matching requires making all sorts of guesses and estimates about the future. These judgments how much to set aside for potential loan losses, what rate of return to expect on a pension fund, over how many years to spread out the cost of a factory make earnings a better reflection of the long-term economic health of a company.They also provide ample room for managers to fudge. This is why financial analysts and money managers are supposed to know how to look beyond a companys bottom line to find the true economic value in its balance sheet or cash flow statement or, best of all the footnotes to its financial statements. In the bull market of the past 15 years, however, analytic rigor hasnt always been required to make good stock picks. Nobodys paying attention says Robert Olstein, who in 1970 co-authored an influential newsletter called the Quality of Earnings Report and now runs the $140 million Olstein Financial Alert fund. If Microsoft is the archetype of a hugely successful company trying to tone its earnings down so people dont get their expectations too high, Boston Chicken bespeaks an altogether different and more common phenomenon. It is a business that isnt successful yet, but has used accounting to help convince investors that it already is, or at least will be soon.This has enabled it to raise more than $800 million in stock and convertible debt offerings, money which has been essential not only to the companys rapid growth from 175 Boston Chicken restaurants when it went public in one of the decades hottest IPOs in November 1993 to 1,100 restaurants (rechristened Boston Markets) and 325 Einstein Brothers and Noahs bagel stores today but to its very survival. Thats because, economically speaking, Boston Chicken is still a big money loser, as probably can be expected of a startup restaurant chain.All the losses, however, have been incurred by financed area developers, or FADs, which is Boston Chicken lingo for large-scale franchisees that act a lot like subsidiaries but arent. If they were, their losses would have to lie reported on Boston Chickens income statement (they are instead disclosed, on an annual basis only, deep in the text of the companys SEC filings). The FADs get 75% of their startup capital in loans from Boston Chicken, and with that money they pay the company the royalties, franchise fees, and interest that allow it to report ever-rising profits.Once the restaurants start making money, Boston Chicken exercises its right to convert the loans into equity, officially dubbing the FADs subsidiaries and allowing their profits to flow to its bottom line. Thats the plan, at least, as outlined with somewhat more delicacy in the companys 1993 annual report. And so far it has worked. Sure, business publications have printed nasty articles about the company, accounting professors have warned their students about it, and short sellers have lined up in droves to place bets that its stock price will crash. But Boston Chickens stock price has more than held its own.Part of investors sanguinity has to do with the track record of the two former Blockbuster Entertainment bigwigs who run it, CEO Scott Beck and President Saad Nadhir, and the belief that America really is hungry for takeout chicke n, ham, and meat loaf. But it sure doesnt hurt, analysts and money managers say, that not only is Boston Chicken able to report earnings every quarter, but those earnings have so far never failed to meet or surpass analysts expectationseven though those analysts all know that the earnings in no significant way reflect how the company is doing. Its a very smart strategy, says Michael Moe, a growth stock strategist at Montgomery Securities. It has made enormous amounts of capital available to them at an attractive price that most companies can only dream of. Boston Chicken CFO Mark Stephens says his company was structured not to please Wall Street but to provide flexibility and motivate its franchisees. But he acknowledges that a byproduct of where we are with the structure is that we have a public entity with an earnings complexion that is attractive. He adds: Its like sausage. I love the product; just dont show me how its made. Another company that has used aggressive accounting t o raise money is America Online. AOLs practice of capitalizing and writing off over two years the cost of those ubiquitous free disks and ads it used to lure members was highly controversial and was abandoned in October. But for years it allowed the company to post earnings most of the time instead of losses, which helped it to raise more than $350 million on the stock market.Says Wharton School accounting professor Richard Sloan, referring to both Boston Chicken and AOL: They just view accounting as another marketing tool that they should use to try and promote their ideas. Boston Chicken and America Online are extreme cases. So is Microsoft. The mass of companies lead lives somewhere in between. When they manage earnings, they do it simply to smooth the ups and downs of business life, and of course to meet those Wall Street earnings estimates. Is there evidence of widespread earnings management? You bet. Looking at 17 years of I/B/E/S data on more than 1,000 companies, Jeff Payne of the University ofMississippi and Sean Robb of Canadas Wilfrid Laurier University found an unmistakable pattern of using accruals (i. e. , judgment calls) to manage earnings upward if they were below the analysts consensus and a somewhat less pronounced trend of managing them downward if they were above the consensus. General Electric, a company whose name invariably comes up when you ask Wall Streeters about earnings management, says it does what it does because the stock market demands it. We think consistency of earnings and no surprises is very important for us, says Dennis Dammerman, the companys CFO. Were a very complex, diverse company that no one from the outside looking in can reasonably be expected to understand in complete detail; so our story to the investing world is, we have a lot of diverse businesses, and when you put them all together they produce consistent, reliable earnings growth. And if something inconsistent comes along say a one-time gain from selling off a factory we have a pretty consistent record of saying, Okay, were going to take these large gains and offset them with discretionary decisions, with restructurings. These tactics have helped GE meet or beat expectations every quarter but one in the past five years, and they certainly havent hurt it among investors, even skeptical ones. They are using all sorts of techniques to smooth earnings, says Howard Schilit, whose Center for Financial Research and Analysis keeps institutional investors posted on companies earnings numbers may be hiding business troubles. If I wrote that to my clients, there would be a big yawn. Another investor favorite that produces awfully smooth earnings is Coca-Cola, which in the third quarter of last year took advantage of $520 million in one-time gains from a settlement with the IRS and the sale of some bottling operations to recognize $500 million in supposedly one-time hits. One of those hits, $200 million used to reduce the inventories of soft dri nk concentrate at bottling companies, was explained as a move to free up bottlers capital but was seen as an admission by Coke that it had been shipping concentrate early to artificially boost earnings.That hurt the companys stock price for a few months, but by taking the charge Coke gave itself the option of using inventory buildup at its bottlers to pad profits later. When they pull it out in 1998 or 1999 to keep up their 19% or 20% earnings growth, everyone will have forgotten, says Boy Burry, who follows Coke for Oppenheimer Co. Will everyone really forget? If financial markets are in fact efficient, economic reality will in the long run win out over accounting games.But the long run can seem awfully far away when youve got a posse of analysts breathing down your neck every three months. Many corporate executives also seem to think investors take earnings numbers at face value; they write outraged letters to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, accountings top rule-making body, whenever it proposes a change that might reduce reported earnings. They obviously dont believe in efficient markets, says Neel Foster, a FASB member and former treasurer of Compaq Computer. Academic evidence shows that generally, accounting changes dont result in changes in stock prices. But it also shows that people that make greater disclosures generally have a lower cost of capital. They dont believe that either. Even this doesnt explain why some companies seem to persist in managing earnings in the face of Wall Street disbelief. Food maker H. J. Heinz grew rapidly during the 1980s but has since needed repeated asset sales and other special items to keep earnings steadyand its stock has lagged.Last June the company announced quarterly earnings of 45 cents a share but failed to mention that four of those cents came from the sale of a magazine and two pet food brands. It was immaterial, a company spokesman says now, but it nevertheless infuriated some analysts, who found out only when they received the annual report a month later It didnt help the stock price either, although the stock later bounced back on rumors of a major restructuring. What might motivate such corporate behavior?One answer is money. High-level executives like to get paid a lot, and it so happens that many bonus plans including the one at Heinzare built around meeting earnings targets. The rise of performance related It so happens†¦ that many bonuses has taken earnings tweaking to new heights, say some executive bonus plans are market watchers. Theres no reliable measure of such activity, but built around meeting one rough gauge, comparing profits reported to the Internal earnings targets. Revenue Service by U. S. orporations with profits reported to shareholders (the measure that counts for bonuses) by companies on the SP 500, gives a clue. It shows some wild relative swings in SP earnings in the late 1980s and early 1990s, probably a result of big corporations using one tim e charges to pay for restructuring costs like plant closures. This write-off binge ended in 1994. Which could mean either that earnings quality is getting better or that companies are coasting to ever-higher earnings now because they hid ongoing costs back then.While theres no conclusive proof that managing earnings is on the rise, it is undeniable that the game is being played more aggressively than ever. This isnt necessarily bad. The good side of what a lot of people call the game of managing expectations is that companies realize that they have to give better guidance to the market as to what their prospects are, says Ed Keon, senior vice president for marketing at I/B/E/S.The downside of giving better guidance-apart from the hours of valuable top management time that it eats up is that the investors most interested in the estimates are not exactly the well-run corporations best friend. They are the momentum guys mutual fund managers and hedge fund jockeys and individual invest ors who jump on the bandwagon when a companys earnings growth is accelerating and beating the analysts estimates, and jump off the second it misses a quarter. When it stops, they sell you cannot break this algorithm, says a resigned Eric Benhamou, chief executive of 3Com Corp. which lost $7 billion in market value in a matter of weeks this year as it became known that its earnings for the quarter ended February 25 would nor not meet analysts expectations. The moral of the story: Unless youre a trader, ignore the short-term kabuki that the companies and the analysts perform for each other, but educate yourself about the accounting games that companies play. If enough investors did, it could mean that the smartest earnings and expectations management strategy of the 2000s will be dont bother. 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