04 Mar EARNINGS SEASON ENDS; JOB CUT JARGON
EARNINGS SEASON ENDS
Despite ongoing economic uncertainty and inflationary pressures, many companies demonstrated remarkable resilience to deliver strong results for investors during February’s reporting season. Across the board, 66 per cent met or exceeded expectations.
Players in the financial services sector reported within or near expectations, while retailers had mixed results. Among the online retailers, Kogan.com bounced back into the black and Temple & Webster beat market expectations. However, market darlings JB Hi-FI and Domino’s Pizza both suffered profit slumps as customers tightened their purse strings.
Among local media players, Seven West Media and Nine Entertainment both saw their profits decimated by an ailing advertising market. News Corp Australia also endured ad revenue pressures but managed to produce an uplift in earnings, partly thanks to cost cuts.
JOB CUTS JARGON
Amid the glut of earnings results this month, a handful of big names also announced job cuts – and it’s been interesting to see the various euphemisms they’ve used to justify their decisions.
Sony announced 900 job cuts in its PlayStation division by stating it needs to “future ready” itself, while BHP said it was making an unknown number of redundancies to “simplify” how the business works and “better align work activities within assets and support quicker decision making.”
In a Bloomberg interview, Harvard Business School professor Sandra Sucher said that the delicate language choices by companies announcing redundancies results from “moral disengagement,” or their efforts to rationalize the action for themselves. Standford Professor Robert Sutton summed up the “anesthetizing language” used by companies as “jargon monoxide”.
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT?
Working remotely from home in Texas, Tyler Loudon and his wife, a BP employee, often found themselves in close proximity to each other’s workspace. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, quite a bit it seems. The US Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that after overhearing confidential information from his wife regarding BP’s takeover of TravelCenters of America, purchased more than 46,000 shares in TravelCenters, making $US1.75 million in illegal profits.
Despite being unaware of her husband’s alleged activities, Mr Loudon’s wife was sacked by BP. Mr Loudon has not only been charged with insider trading, but his wife has also filed for divorce.
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