Tag: accrual for material loss
SEC charges healthcare services company engaged in earnings management
Yesterday, the SEC announced settled charges against Healthcare Services Group, Inc., a provider of housekeeping and other services to healthcare facilities, its CFO and its controller, for alleged failures to properly accrue and disclose litigation loss contingencies—accounting and disclosure violations that “enabled the company to report inflated quarterly [EPS] that met research analysts’ consensus estimates for multiple quarters.” This action is the result of SEC Enforcement’s “EPS Initiative, which uses risk-based data analytics to uncover potential accounting and disclosure violations caused by, among other things, earnings management practices.” Gurbir Grewal, the new Director of Enforcement, warned that the SEC will continue to leverage its “in-house data analytic capabilities to identify improper accounting and disclosure practices that mask volatility in financial performance, and continue to hold public companies and their executives accountable for their violations.” The company paid $6 million to settle the action. The SEC Order makes the matter of accruing for loss contingencies sound simple and straightforward, implying that the company’s behavior involved “big bath” accounting and other earnings management practices, and that may well be the case in this instance. However, in many cases, deciding whether, when and what to disclose or accrue for a loss contingency is not so clear cut and can often be a challenging exercise.
Mylan settles SEC charges for disclosure and accounting failures arising out of DOJ investigation
At the end of September, the SEC announced that it had filed a complaint in federal court charging pharma Mylan N.V. with failing to timely disclose in its financial statements the “reasonably possible” material losses arising out of a DOJ civil investigation. The DOJ had investigated whether, by misclassifying its biggest product, the EpiPen, as a “generic,” Mylan had overcharged Medicaid by hundreds of millions of dollars. According to the complaint, although the investigation continued for two years, Mylan also failed to accrue for the “probable and reasonably estimable” material losses, as required under GAAP, until the announcement of a $465 million settlement with DOJ. In addition, some of Mylan’s other allegedly misleading disclosure flowed from its omission to discuss the claims. The SEC alleged that Mylan’s risk factor was misleading because it framed the government’s misclassification claim as a hypothetical possibility, when, in fact, the claim had already been made. As a consequence of these failures, the SEC alleged, Mylan’s SEC filings were false and misleading in violation of the Securities Act and Exchange Act. Mylan agreed to pay $30 million to settle the SEC’s charges. While the SEC complaint makes the matter sound straightforward, in practice, deciding whether, when and what to disclose or accrue for a loss contingency can often be a challenging exercise.
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