Maybe it's the summer blues. Or maybe the layoffs at newspapers and magazines are what leave coverage of important issues in business, sports and politics to 14-year-old unpaid interns.
It could be just a coincidental run of bad luck, but The Business Press Maven has been playing the press-release game way too often lately -- even, most recently, with
Google(GOOG Quote - Cramer on GOOG - Stock Picks).
They Just Don't Get Google! |
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What's the press-release game?
When a company reports, it issues a press release. It's basically a one-page document -- easy to read -- with a dressed-up-for-dinner take on the company's quarter. You often have to delve into the financials and elsewhere for texture and dirt, but the more-forthright companies will feature one or two negatives, mitigating factors or other caveats fairly prominently.
Since it's only a page and since negatives jump out, the business media should pick up on such comments, right? Wrong.
Just this week, we saw the business media report in near unison that
Intel(INTC Quote - Cramer on INTC - Stock Picks) issued better-than-expected earnings and all the great things that meant, after Intel itself had admitted way up top in its press release that an unexpectedly favorable tax rate and lower restructuring costs --
one-time factors -- were the cause.
So I decided to play the press-release game with Google, combing through the company-issued document for some important cautionary factor that was all but ignored by the business media even though it was hiding in plain sight.
Indeed, something jumped out at me quickly. Anytime you hear that a portion of a company's business surged past the 50% mark, you have to take notice, and that's what we saw quickly under the
"International Revenue" heading:
"Revenues from outside of the United States totaled $2.80 billion, representing 52% of total revenues in the second quarter of 2008, compared to 48% in the second quarter of 2007 and 51% in the first quarter of 2008."
Marek Fuchs
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