The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a periodic feature by PondelWilkinson that turns a critical eye on the way quarterly results are communicated.

The Good

Earnings season is nearing its end, and after all of the Q4 news releases and conference call transcripts have been parsed and picked away at like a bone-in fillet, it’s time to debrief about the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to communicating results.

Let’s start with the good. More companies are embracing the use of video when conducting earnings calls, and T-Mobile did an excellent job streaming its Q4 results in real time.   Of course, the company delivered record growth, so who knows if the positive energy would still pervade on video if the numbers were worse.

The Bad

Certain adjectives and verbs continue to see the light of day in earnings releases when they should’ve been put to bed a long time ago. Following is a short list: pleased, thrilled, excited, disruptive, highly anticipated, state-of-the-art, cutting edge, and leading.

The Ugly

I was recently invited to speak to MBA students at the University of Southern California about investor relations.  We were discussing conference calls and how analysts and investors queue up during the calls to ask management questions.   Apparently, a fairly prominent short seller had lectured to the same group a few weeks ago and said he poses as a well-known, long-only buyside institution to get into the queue and then when it’s his turn to ask a question, he hammers home his short-sighted agenda.

OK, that’s a wrap for the good, the bad and the ugly for Q4. Until next quarter.

— Evan Pondel, epondel@pondel.com