November 16, 2007
BEA puts a gloss on the numbers
It seems that BEA Systems can juggle numbers just as much as Oracle can (see note below.)
Announcing earnings on Thursday, CEO Alfred Chuang wanted Wall Street to overlook his gigantic stock option backdating charge (which virtually wiped out reported profits for the past decade) and focus instead on the software company’s rebounding profit margins. And not just any profit margins but pro forma figures which, among other things, excluded the costs of hiring all those lawyers and bankers to keep the barbarians (in the form of Larry Ellison and Carl Icahn) from the gates.
Shouldn’t expenses like these be seen as a normal cost of doing business, one analyst wondered?
It isn’t normal to come under fire from a hostile bidder and a shareholder activist at the same time, retorted BEA executive Bill Klein. "We don’t believe that both of these circumstances can continue for the long run." Is that reasoned analysis or wishful thinking?
