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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Hull who wrote (146602)	11/1/2001 8:57:24 PM
From: Dan3	Respond to of 186894

Re: By "correct", do you mean "in compliance with laws and regualtions" or do you mean "morally forthright"? I mean, did the report present an accurate picture of what was happening at the company? Forget "morally forthright" and don't worry about whether the accounting I's are dotted and the accounting t's are crossed. Did the 5/15/2001 report present to investors what was really happening at the company? On 5/15/2001, NT reported it's quarterly results and indicated a gross profit of $1.8 Billion for the quarter. Various charges resulted in a $2.9 Billion "paper" loss for the quarter, but they still reported their total rose by $400 million for the quarter. Three months later, on 8/8/2001, they reported a loss of $19.4 Billion for the quarter. My point is, that despite the previous accounting being perfectly correct from a bookeeper's perspective, the accountant's liberal valuations resulted in earnings that were overstated by $Billions in several of the previous quarters' statements. They didn't really lose $19 Billion in one quarter, but several of their previous earnings reports had been wrong, not including all of their costs - and they had to include the amounts of the unreported losses from several previous quarters in one big, one quarter writedown. I see signs that Intel has been doing the same thing, but on a considerably smaller scale. If things go well in the next few years, they can make up for it if they really earn $5 Billion each year but report it as $2.5 Billion. But if things stay tight, they'll have to do an NT style writedown, but probably on the order of $4 Billion to $8 Billion, not the $19 Billion NT had to take. Or they could just report losses of a few Billion for each of the next few years, that would fix it too. Whichever way Intel chooses to make up for how they've reported their "earnings" past year, or so, it's going to be messing up at least some of their quarters over the next few years.