Reuters
Veritas Again Restates 2000, 2001 Results
Monday March 17, 4:22 pm ET
PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Veritas Software Corp. (NasdaqNM:VRTS - News) on Monday again restated its 2000 and 2001 revenues and earnings, saying in a regulatory filing that an internal audit uncovered two more improperly booked swap deals with undisclosed customers.
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Silicon Valley-based Veritas in January restated its fiscal 2000 and 2001 results after it wrongly accounted for related software sales and advertising deals with AOL Time Warner's (NYSE:AOL - News) beleaguered America Online Internet unit, whose accounting practices are the subject of federal investigations.
With its first restatement, the storage management software maker said it had wrongly recognized $20 million in fees from a $50 million America Online software and services deal as revenue. It also said $20 million in ad service fees to the Internet unit would not be booked as expenses.
The latest restatement involved further revisions to the America Online deal as well as the impact of the two newly disclosed deals, according to Veritas' annual report filed Monday.
A Veritas spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.
The January restatement increased Veritas' 2000 net loss by about $7 million to about $627 million and reduced its revenue by $17 million to about $1.190 billion.
With the new restatement, Veritas further increased its fiscal 2000 net loss to $628.4 million and cut its revenue by another $2.9 million to $1.187 billion.
In its first restatement, Veritas cut its fiscal 2001 operating expenses by $13 million to $1.799 billion, trimmed revenues by $1 million to $1.491 billion, and lowered its reported net loss to $643 million from $651 million.
The latest restatement took the company's fiscal 2001 operating expenses down slightly to $1.798 billion, brought back nearly $600,000 in revenue to put total sales at $1.492 billion, and further narrowed Veritas' net loss to $642 million.
Ken Lonchar, Veritas' chief financial officer at the time of the deals, resigned last year after it was made public that he had lied about his educational background.
Shareholders have sued Lonchar, Veritas Chief Executive Gary Bloom, and Veritas' former executive vice president in charge of worldwide operations, alleging that they profited by trading on insider information before the company issued its first restatement.
Veritas said last year it was handing information about its America Online transactions to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (News - Websites), which is probing accounting practices at America Online. |
