Accentuating the caveat emptor perspective with critical commentary on financial disclosure. I adopt a skeptical persona and look for chinks in the teflon coating of financial disclosure. My job is to identify financial warts. Perhaps a Black Swan. Disclosure: I do not hold positions in stocks mentioned for three trading days before or after blog post.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
First Data Corporation (NYSE:FDC) has a three for one day
First Data Corp (NYSE:FDC) released three major announcements yesterday outlining important new deals (must be important otherwise why announce them). The press releases were woefully short on financial specifics. The emphasis was on how wonderful these grand relationships will be and how much (but do not ask us to count it) revenues will accrue. Major companies do not make arrangements without the financial number crunchers going through the necessary due diligence. Also the releases did not indicate when the deals were actually agreed to by the participants. So how long has this news been around? Three big deals all in one-day looks contrived. How does an investor assess the financial impact of this news?