$10B Of Goodwill Gone

So the company lost $10B of goodwill from their balance in a single Q. Went down by 50%.






,,Because of lead in cables"


Question :

have you seen a case where something similar happened yet the goodwill went back to previous levels, few quarters later ?

Thanks.

 

Is this T or VZ?

 

Close call. Lead was a giveaway (?)

$LUMN

Now as you mentioned others, then it must be another bs story.

 

As you probably know, goodwill is a highly subjective accounting category. It shouldn't be that way, but in practice it is. Nearly everything lumped into goodwill is speculative in terms of valuation and I saw companies years ago tinker with those numbers endlessly to make the business appear stronger than it was.

 

Thanks ktm.

Exactly what i was looking for.

For now i guess that some industries have a higher chance of that happening, but will see in time.

 

As far as I know, neither goodwill nor any other long term asset values can be “written up”, unless the asset is held in a special category (eg securities held for sale for banks). Goodwill represents the difference (almost always positive, however can be negative eg when UBS bought CS) between the book value and actual price paid for acquisitions, and is thus written down if the acquired unit’s value is found to be impaired - such as by finding lead in their cabling.

 

However it unfolds, will be interesting to see the finale.

Thanks.

 

negative goodwill is called bargain purchase and sometimes you can just put it as a gain to equity (at least my accountants allowed it).

 

What happened when Apple Computers was just holding/losing market share...Before their phones??

GE a few years ago??