Tag: SEC

VMware in hot water with US Securities and Exchange Commission

Posted on September 22, 2022 by - News

VMware is in trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission who believes that it would have missed its earnings targets numerous times since May 2019 if it had not shifted “tens of millions of dollars” in revenue into future quarters and “obscured” a slowdown in demand for its product from investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a “cease and desist order” to force VMware to stop the practice of “discretionary holds” where a company withholds reporting all of its revenue until the following quarter so that its sales teams are given a “buffer” to meet future targets.

The SEC wrote: “VMware misleadingly reassured investors on quarterly earnings calls and in earnings-related press releases and other earnings materials … that its revenue growth was meeting expectations, when revenue actually would not have met expectations or would have missed expectations by a larger amount without VMware’s continual net reductions in its discretionary backlog.”

SEC investigates Blackberry deals

Posted on February 6, 2015 by - News

watchdogWatchdogs  for the US Securities and Exchange Commission are snuffling around the rump of a January 14 spike in trading in BlackBerry options that took place hours before Reuters reported that Samsung Electronics was in talks to buy the Canadian smartphone maker.

One trade took place at 12:06 p.m. on that day, when there was a purchase of options with the rights to buy 200,000 shares of BlackBerry stock at a strike price of $10 a share.

In the afternoon, Reuters reported that Samsung had offered to buy BlackBerry for as much as $7.5 billion, valuing its stock at between $13.35 to $15.49 per share.

BlackBerry’s stock shot up 30 percent on the news meaning that someone was laughing all the way to the bank. If the buyer had been able to sell the options at that high they would have been able to make a profit of $490,000 on a $20,000 investment.

Both companies later denied they were in talks and BlackBerry’s shares tumbled. Reuters subsequently corrected its story to make clear that the discussions were between advisors.