"one or two swings offsetting a round-a-bout" On one hand I tend...

"one or two swings offsetting a round-a-bout"

On one hand I tend to agree – giving them the benefit of the doubt which they have earned over the years I suspect management are happy that the statutory accounting figure resembles current reality of the business and doesn’t distort the underlying trajectory of the business too much.

On the other hand I’m with Ves, Its more like swings and spaceships. Termination Payments and Impairments are real cash expenses which should go through the P&L. Lumpy, yes and you may want to smooth but undoubtedly a real economic cash expense to the business.

The other side of originally creating the deferred acquisition payable is Goodwill – a balancing figure from business acquisition accounting. Writing off the consideration sends it to the P&L as though you have got a discount, Maybe that makes sense if overall you had got a discount to identifiable assets on purchase – but in this case where the acquisition accounting created a goodwill amount????. You have effectively created non cash accounting profit by capitalizing goodwill. I don’t know what reality altering substances the accounts were on when they came up with that standard but I would sure like some......

Nothing out of line here – DTL are just following the rules, but with John Grant leaving last Dec (termination benefits?????) perhaps the economic reality communication culture starts to drift?????

Any rate Just nit-picking as a counter to my bias that creeps in when stocks do for you what DTL has done over the years. .
What’s the saying – Be alert not alarmed.