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Will Patrick Byrne Answer Sam Antar’s Questions?

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

Sam probably won’t be getting a real apology so maybe Patrick will answer his questions on the earnings call today? It’s going down in little while and it’s sure to be a do not miss event.

To give you a little preview, Sam Antar provided us with his questions that he submitted to P. Byrne, the Company’s President Jonathan Johnson and Joe Tobacco (independent member of the audit committee). We’ll be live-blogging the call starting at 5 pm EDT to see if these get answered and if anything else exciting happens.

From: Sam E. Antar
To: Patrick Byrne ,
Joseph Tabacco ,
Board – Jonathan Johnson
Date: Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 2:04 PM
Subject: Overstock.com conference Call Questions

Dear Patrick Byrne:

The following questions are submitted for Overstock.com’s conference call scheduled today. I respectfully request that each question be read aloud in its entirely and that you and Johnson specifically answer each question.

1. Will you admit that I correctly identified GAAP violations by Overstock.com in its accounting treatment for recoveries from underbilled and overpaid fulfillment partners and that the company was dead wrong?

2. Will you admit that I was correct when I properly reported that Overstock.com’s GAAP violations caused the company to report an improper Q4 2008 profit, rather than a properly reported net loss?

3. Will you admit that Overstock.com continued to violate GAAP even after being notified by me of specific GAAP violations?

4. Will you and Jonathan Johnson admit that you made the following false statements to investors?

On February 6, 2009, you responded to my original February 4 blog post identifying specific GAAP violations on the InvestorVillage message board by claiming that:

Antar’s ramblings are gibberish. Show them to any accountant and they will confirm. He has no clue what he is talking about.

On November 18, 2009, during a conference call with analysts and investors, you falsely claimed:

In fact, we as I understand it, this doesn’t change any positive quarter to a negative quarter or any negative quarter to a positive quarter.

In a November 25, 2009 Salt Lake Tribune article, company President Jonathan Johnson was quoted as saying:

None of these changes that they [Grant Thornton] are talking about, or that people at the SEC are now asking about, make any of our quarters go from negative to positive or from positive to negative.

Will you and Johnson admit that your quoted statements above were false?

Regards,

Sam E. Antar

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Bill speaks of using CPA Success as a tool to reach the MACPA’s members in ways they never thought they could and speaks as someone who truly enjoys what he does for a living. He likes posts he’s written in airports (who doesn’t love travel blogging? *cough*) while his co-blogger Tom Hood (I believe you all are familiar with his work as MACPA CEO and CPA) prefers tackling the topic of leadership. Whatever your accounting poison, CPA Success covers it all.

Bill was hard to pin down but finally found a moment to get to our five questions, enjoy.


Why do you blog?
It’s yet another way of connecting with our members. Our blog allows us to present news and analyses much more quickly than we ever could before. It allows us to communicate with members in ways we never had before. We’ve had an opportunity to carve out a niche as a thought leader in the CPA space that we never could have established without blogging.

A good accountant is…
A good CPA is a trusted advisor, strategic thinker and confidant, someone who sees beyond the numbers and helps companies grow and clients understand how their finances impact their personal and professional lives. And at all times, honest and ethical.

A good blogger is…
… observant, and a good story-teller.

What is the biggest benefit you’ve gotten from starting your blog?
Notoriety. But the biggest benefit is this: CPAs have really worked hard to carve out a place for themselves in the social arena. When we first started playing around with this stuff three years ago, there weren’t a lot of accounting and finance folks in there with us; it seemed like we were working in a void. Since then, though CPAs have really taken the social bull by the horns. They’re blogging, they’re using things like Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook, and they’re figuring out to put these tools to use in ways that benefit their businesses and their clients. It’s been fun and extremely rewarding to see CPAs make the leap and work with them to figure all of this out.

The biggest issue facing accountants today is…
… complexity. The profession is facing numerous legislative and regulatory changes these days, and that’s in addition to the many changes in accounting standards and other technical rules that have been enacted recently. Keeping up with all of these changes is a monumental task for CPAs, who are busy enough simply serving their clients.