Why Enron's Writedown Unnerves Some Investors

Enron is trying to improve disclosure to investors, but its decision to reduce equity by $1.2 billion in the third quarter has created dismay and confusion in the market.

The action was disclosed in a dubiously discreet manner. More important, investors are struggling to pinpoint how the shrinkage will affect Enron's balance sheet, profits and earnings guidance.

Enron didn't provide answers to questions submitted on the equity reduction.

Enron doesn't include a balance sheet in its earnings release, so the equity decrease couldn't be spotted in numbers supplied Tuesday. And even though Enron did break out $1 billion in earnings charges in its release, the company didn't feel it necessary to mention the equity write down anywhere in the text.

Instead, the public first heard about it on a Tuesday conference call. CEO Kenneth Lay said Enron had shrunk its equity as a result of terminating a so-called "structured finance arrangement." The Wall Street Journal later reported that Enron's counter-party in this transaction was an investment partnership called LJM2 Co-Investment, which has set up and run by Enron's finance chief, Andrew Fastow.

This is what Lay said on the Tuesday call about the equity move: "In connection with the early termination, shareholders' equity will be reduced approximately $1.2 billion, with a corresponding significant reduction in the number of diluted shares outstanding." According to The Journal, Lay then said Wednesday on another call that Enron had repurchased 55 million shares.

Enron's supporters count Lay's mention of a reduction in the share count as bullish, because it should boost earnings per share numbers in the future.

But there are two possible problems with this theory.

First, Enron affirmed its previous earnings guidance that it expects to make $2.15 per share in operating earnings next year. Critically, the company did not say whether its guidance was given using a share count without the 55 million shares or not. If the forecast does assume the exclusion of the 55 million shares, the company should have upped its 2002 per-share earnings forecast by around 6%, since that's the amount by which the share count will be reduced. Enron needs to say what share count it's using in its guidance.

Second, it's almost impossible to determine where these shares were ever recorded, casting a certain amount of doubt on Lay's assertion that the share count will come down.

Why question the CEO? Well, in its 2000 annual report, Enron included some disclosure of the 55 million shares connected with LJM2. It reads: "At December 31, 2000, Enron had derivative instruments...on 54.8 million shares of Enron common stock." The derivative instruments appear to be types of options, or agreements that give the counterparty the right to buy or sell stock at agreed prices.

But these derivatives-linked shares don't show up where they should in the annual report: in the table that breaks out the difference between the basic and diluted share counts. The line item in this table that shows options-related shares totals only 43 million shares, which is close to the amount of employee pay options that qualified for inclusion. Therefore, that number almost certainly doesn't include the 55 million LJM2-related shares. The fact is, at least some of the 55 million derivatives-linked shares should be included if the derivatives were like normal options. That's because the LJM2 derivatives appear to have been "in the money", or profitable for the holders. Typically, all in-the-money options-based stock has to be included in the diluted share count. And these LJM2 derivatives did appear to have that status at the end of 2000. Back then, Enron stock was trading around $80, way above the average $68 level at which these derivatives made money for LJM2.

Maybe these weren't simple options and had other conditions attached that excluded them from the diluted share count. That's what disclosure elsewhere in the annual report appears to imply. Alternatively, the options were embedded somewhere else in the share count table or equity disclosure, though it's hard think where.

Presumably, investors will get a full explanation in Enron's quarterly financial results filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, due by the middle of November.