I 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.
Fascinating. 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.