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Technology Stocks : Western Digital (WDC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frodo Baxter who wrote (8636)	1/30/1998 3:24:00 PM
From: SJSharky	Respond to of 11057

Could you point to the FASB bulletin that defines "special" versus "extraordinary"? Lawrence-- The point I was trying to make was that there is no such thing as a "special" charge in accounting terms. They sort of made it up (at least as far as I know). So there is no GAAP guidance on "special." APB 30 talks about extraordinary items. In order to qualify, an event or transaction must be unusual and infrequent. The types of charges mentioned in the press release qualify as neither unusual nor infrequent. Betcha First Call will exclude the charge regardless. In any case, it seems to have worked, as the street thinks they have this problem licked. Agree in both cases. Seems like the smoke and mirrors worked. I dunno about that. From the vague way they described it in the cc, it seems like mostly write-offs and downs of assets. I guess maybe I was unclear what I meant by one-time charge. There will be charges in the future for write-offs of inventory and other assets, however, they will not be as large (unless another situation comes up such as HD prices plummeting even further). If good income management prevails, WDC would have taken as much charges as possible this quarter in their "special" charge number, thereby reducing the amount of charge they will have to take next quarter. If you're going to hit with bad news this quarter, you might as well take the big hit this quarter rather than spreading it over the next few quarters. What if, as a matter of course, the company takes an aggressive approach to depreciation? If the company changed their depreciation lives or method and it had a material impact on the financial statements, they would be forced to disclose the effect of the change on a separate line item of the financials. Unlikely that this would happen. Hope this helps. --Ryan