Way Off Target
12 Jul 2006 in City Pages, Target by GarrickI caught the same article Dave did this morning at the CP Blotter and didn’t think anything of it.
Thankfully, Dave did a little poking around and found the “three of every four dollars in profit” is not on all of Target profit, but rather on the 15% increase in profits in a single quarter.
What does that mean in numbers? Hypothetically. Let’s say a company has a year’s profit of just under a $1 million ($998,675 to be exact), 15% quarterly profit increase might look something like this:
Q1 - $200,000
Q2 - $230,000
Q3 - $264,500
Q4 - $304,175
Now let’s compare the two numbers;
(City Pages) 75% of Q1 to Q4 profits: $749,006
(Business Week) 75% of Q3 to Q4 increase: $29,756
That’s a discrepancy of $719,250.
That’s not just a big difference - that’s bad, deceptive, and misleading journalism.
BTW - if you want to crunch the actual numbers yourself, here’s Targets 8K filing. If you’re wondering, Target’s 2006Q1 earnings were $886 million.
Comments (1 Comment)
KH added these pithy words on Jul 27 06 at 9:27 amFascinating. Am getting to know one of the regular CP writers - this person is fed up with being directed to write stories that make news, rather than stories ABOUT the news.
For what it’s worth … I don’t read the papers, either, for the same reason I barely pay attention to politics. Do I want to be a better-informed citizen? Sure. Do I have the patience, time or constitution to sort out the facts from the spin? Nope.
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