When they take a $50 million charge to account for expenses "related to the Geocities acquisition", they are throwing all sorts of things in that basket. Legal fees, investment banking fees, accountants, etc...
It's really easy to include expenses that would have been incurred had they not done an acquisition. For instance, if they reviewed 10 other acquisitions that they passed on, they simply instruct their lawyers and bankers and accountants to throw those costs onto the Geocities tab. What's a few million here or there?
If Yahoo didn't do any acquisitions during a quarter (that's not ever going to happen!), they would be forced to actually include the payrolls of their internal and external deal-makers on their expense side like every legitimate company like Microsoft does. Oh, but that would hurt their pro-forma margins.
Also, on the R&D side, they don't do much in-house. If they have a big project, they'll get some small company to do it for them, then acquire the small company and pretend it didn't cost them anything. Free R&D! That's B.S.
They might as well temporarily fire 20 employees, set them up in a separate building next door with their own incorporation documents, then "buy" them back after they've blown through $10 million. Then write it off and don't include it in "pro-forma". That way Yahoo never has to account for their own development. |
