http://techrights.org/2009/05/30/finance-novell-2009-q2-results/ Free Software Sentry – watching and reporting maneuvers of those threatened by software freedom Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:00:35 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://techrights.org/2009/05/30/finance-novell-2009-q2-results/comment-page-1/#comment-64309 JohnD Sat, 30 May 2009 21:16:43 +0000 http://boycottnovell.com/?p=11900#comment-64309 "Cooking the books" refers to accounting processes where losses are hidden in order to give the illusion of profit. This is what Eron did, they moved the losses to subsidiaries in order to make the primary companies appear to have fantastic profits. This is fraud and is illegal. Grouping profitable products together might be disingenuous, but it's not illegal. Novell might be categorizing products under Linux to improve it's sales percentage compared to the other categories, but there's nothing illegal about it. The losses have been reflected in other categories and on the balance sheet as a whole. You disparage one report because they focused on Novell's net figure, but that's the number that matters most. You can have gross revenue in the billions, but if your net income is zero, or less than zero - you're screwed. The fact that Novell posted a net profit and an increase in operating margin in spite of a decline in revenue of 20 million shows that they are in a much better financial position then they were a year ago. “Cooking the books” refers to accounting processes where losses are hidden in order to give the illusion of profit. This is what Eron did, they moved the losses to subsidiaries in order to make the primary companies appear to have fantastic profits. This is fraud and is illegal.
Grouping profitable products together might be disingenuous, but it’s not illegal. Novell might be categorizing products under Linux to improve it’s sales percentage compared to the other categories, but there’s nothing illegal about it. The losses have been reflected in other categories and on the balance sheet as a whole.
You disparage one report because they focused on Novell’s net figure, but that’s the number that matters most. You can have gross revenue in the billions, but if your net income is zero, or less than zero – you’re screwed. The fact that Novell posted a net profit and an increase in operating margin in spite of a decline in revenue of 20 million shows that they are in a much better financial position then they were a year ago.

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