Paint It Black - Flip Side - financial reports - Brief Article

Chief Executive, The, Dec, 2001 by Joe Queenan

A short while ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Waste Management, the nation's No. 1 garbage hauler, had beaten earnings expectations in the second quarter by asking investors to ignore a number of "unusual expenses." These included $1 million to repaint its fleet of 33,000 garbage trucks, plus $30 million in consulting fees.

The bold decision to include painting costs in the unusual expenses category ruffled more than a few feathers. David Dreman, the venerable value investor and contrarian who owns 2.7 million shares of the company, said the revelations made him want to "take another look at the stock." Other investors will likely follow suit.

But Waste Management isn't the first to reveal refurbishing outlays of this sort. In the past 12 months, as beleaguered companies have had to resort to all manner of accounting legerdemain to dress up their balance sheets, more than two dozen have been criticized for a similarly liberal interpretation of the "unusual" expenses concept. Here are a few examples:

Eighteen months ago, Plausible Diagnostics, a software company in Costa Bruta, CA, reported $1.7 million in unusual expenses stemming from taxi fares. Apparently, entry-level employees had been lured to the remote company headquarters with the promise that a spur of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Co. would soon be built. When the spur died on the drawing board, the company was forced to pay the cost of ferrying 135 employees daily from downtown San Francisco via taxi. Luckily, the company went out of business during last winter's dot-com meltdown, but accounting specialists feel a dangerous precedent had been set.

"This is like picking up the bar bill for employees because they drink more tequila than they can afford," says Gates McCormick, public policy director at the Institute for Accounting Nuance in Des Moines.

Ironically, tequila did figure into a second accounting dustup last April, when Houston oil drilling concern Zapatista, Huerta, Balboa, Cortez & El Fuego Vaca reported $1.7 million in unusual expenses stemming from a bar brawl in Puerto Vallerta involving COO Harry Wandelstandt and 14 Mexican policemen. "When it became obvious that the police weren't going to let Harry go unless we sweetened the pot, we coughed up a few grand and reported it as an unusual expense," says Zapatista CFO Ray "Chick" Burkett.

In one of the strangest examples of unusual expenses, Long Island trucking company Trans-Adequate Trans-Lines recently shelled out $13.7 million to 55 consultants employed by a firm called Only Hue. When shareholder activists dipped into the firm's latest 10K, it turned out that the 55 men were not consultants at all but painters hired to re-coat the company's fleet of 235 trucks. It seems the powers that be feared the expenditure would look bad on the earnings statement and decided to list the painters as "consultants."

"This is basically a class thing, and it drives me kind of nuts," says Vic Stepanic, CFO of Trans-Adequate. "If you tell investors you spent $13.7 million to paint your trucks or to hire some muscle to get rid of competitors, they get all hot and bothered. But if you tell them you spent the money on consultants, that's A-okay."

Perhaps the most peculiar case involves a Milwaukee micro-brewery that listed $1.5 million in unusual expenses last August: $35,000 to hire a polka band to play at the annual picnic and then $1.4 million to bankroll a public relations firm to rehabilitate the company's tarnished image in the wake of the band's appearance. "We had no idea when we hired Guns 'n' Squeeze Boxes that they were a hard-core, inner city, hip-hop polka band," fumes Jimmy Curtis, founder of the popular brewery. "The damage done to our reputation--three shootings, 153 arrests--honestly, I can't tell you how much it impacted our bottom line."

But how does paying for the fallout from a disastrous polka band performance qualify as an unusual expense? "I think hiring a bunch of teenaged Aryan Nation New Age polka musicians to play at your picnic definitely qualifies as 'unusual,'" says the befuddled brewer. "It's not like we hired Garth Brooks or Willie Nelson. But let me assure our shareholders that it's definitely a non-recurring expense--next year we're going to bring in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir."

Joe Queenan is a regular columnist for CE.