7 Comments

1. Particularly interesting as we’re embroiled in New York’s fraud case against Trumpler.

2. WHY do these (the few even taken up) take so long to come before the SEC Gods? Simply encourages more bad behavior. Great system.

America self-combusting in every way.

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Yes great throwback - followed newell for years. There was a great pic on X with a couple (halloween costume) the man as ebitda and the woman as adj ebitda - not a fan of the adjustments - if you adjust every qtr its not adj its part of your poor business model - great piece!

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Jason, thanks. I think it's a fun throwback for everybody who ever remotely had a brush with it. Agree on the adjustments. I remember some company that had like double or triple adjustments.... crazy. Of course, I'm old enough to remember when plain old EBITDA was dubious. I wrote this in 2000 https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2000/07/10/283793/. Doesn't matter till it does!!!

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Is Newell haunted by the ghost of Chainsaw Al Dunlap?

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Ha, no - Newell wasn't hiding barbecues in some warehouse somewhere!

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Love this (unfortunately from the perspective of someone who bought into Polk). What’s the moral? Avoid companies that are doing any adjustments - how else do we know it’s a fraudulent adjustment versus legit.

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I remember back to when we were doing our work and they had just had some investor presentation. One of our subs was there , who had history with Polk, had been there and said he was totally out of character... nervous, clutching a chair next to him, seemingly very uncomfortable. THAT was the tell...

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