Originally posted by: thilan29
Originally posted by: Idontcare
"We have actually a couple of situations -- we have inventory that we completely wrote off in a prior period. We also have inventories that we wrote down to market value. Some of those inventories in both categories were sold during the quarter, some of which we had gains on, some of which we had losses on. It turns out that the losses we experienced on the sale of that inventory plus some of the other products actually offset that by a greater amount, and so on a net basis, it was actually a negative impact to the quarter."
Am I the only one that finds it kinda odd that they sold stuff that was valued at zero plus some stuff that was marked down to market value and still managed to come out with a loss on it? If they gave away for free the stuff valued at zero and sold the market value stuff at market value then they would have broke even. I guess the "marked down to market value" stuff wasn't really marked to market value after all.
Could it be current market value versus what it was originally made at?
That decrease in value would have been captured in the initial mark-down/write-down.
Let's create a fictitious example, and I know how much we loves to hate car analogies so here goes...you walk into a Ford dealership (stop laughing, could happen) to buy a car for $30k cash.
You leave the dealership with an asset valued at $30k, it cost you $30k to procure it.
3 months later you report your quarterly earnings/losses to your shareholders (wife/family)...you include the fact that cash on hand decreased $30k, net assets increased $30k.
You further inform them that unfortunately because you bought a Ford instead of a Toyota the market-value (not the same as depreciated value) has declined some 10% over the past 90 days...so net assets take a $3k write-down in your market-value reassessment.
But good news! You also tell them you sold the Ford for $25k, cupholders were not where you liked them, so cash on hand increased $25k and assets decreased $27k (the marked down value you listed).
All told for the quarter your net cash on hand decreased $5k (bought car for $30k, sold it for $25k) and your net assets didn't change, but for some reason there's all this commotion on your balance sheet over mark-downs and selling for losses, etc.
But it begs the question...if the "market value" of the car was $27k as you claimed, then why did you sell the car for only $25k? Isn't $25k the market value? Shouldn't the original marked-down to market-value adjustment have been to mark it down to $25k?
I suppose if the market value was rapidly falling then the timeline could have been such that the gap between marking the assets to market versus the date of sale would have resulted in a negative delta in valuations.