Collaborate Disseminate
Learn how to identify good buys and spot trends in the stock market with the Tykr Stock Screener Lifetime Subscription and Top Tools for Better Stock Picking course. Continue reading Day Trader? Improve Your Odds With This $120 Bundle, on Sale Now!
Last month we shared information on the blog about spam-driven affiliate programs who were selling a variety of shady “anti-Coronavirus” products, including immunity oils, masks, disinfectants, and no-touch thermometers. (See: CAUCE Spamfighters R… Continue reading SEC Suspends CoronaVirus Stock Pump-n-Dump Scammers
We hope you have been good this year because we have a list to start your own biology lab and not everything will fit into Santa’s bag (of holding). If you need some last minute goodie points, Santa loves open-source and people who share on our tip line. Our friends at [The Thought Emporium] have compiled a list of the necessary equipment for a biology lab. Chemistry labs-in-a-box have been the inspiration for many young chemists, but there are remarkable differences between a chemistry lab and a biology lab which are explained in the Youtube video linked above and embedded …read more
Anyone involved in cybersecurity reporting needs a strong sense of numeracy, or mathematical literacy. I see two sorts of examples of innumeracy repeatedly in the media.The first involves the time value of money. Recently CNN claimed Amazon CEO Jeff Be… Continue reading Addressing Innumeracy in Reporting
You’d be a dope to take advice on the stock market from unsolicited spam.
Continue reading Pump-and-dump pot stock spam
Is it possible to make an entertaining video about turning a cube of aluminum into a slightly cubier cube? As it turns out, yes it is, and you might even learn something along with the sight gags and inside jokes if you watch [This Old Tony] cover the basics of squaring up stock.
Whether you’re working in wood or metal, starting with faces that are flat, smooth and perpendicular is the key to quality results. [Tony] is primarily a machinist, so he works with a nice billet of aluminum and goes through some of the fundamental skills every metalworker needs …read more
Continue reading Sometimes Square is Square: Basic Machinist Skills
I read Brian Krebs story Tech Firm Ubiquiti Suffers $46M Cyberheist just now. He writes:
Ubiquiti, a San Jose based maker of networking technology for service providers and enterprises, disclosed the attack in a quarterly financial report filed this week [6 August; RMB] with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company said it discovered the fraud on June 5, 2015, and that the incident involved employee impersonation and fraudulent requests from an outside entity targeting the company’s finance department.
“This fraud resulted in transfers of funds aggregating $46.7 million held by a Company subsidiary incorporated in Hong Kong to other overseas accounts held by third parties,” Ubiquiti wrote. “As soon as the Company became aware of this fraudulent activity it initiated contact with its Hong Kong subsidiary’s bank and promptly initiated legal proceedings in various foreign jurisdictions. As a result of these efforts, the Company has recovered $8.1 million of the amounts transferred.”
Brian credits Brian Honan at CSO Online, with noticing the disclosure yesterday.
This is a terrible crime that I would not wish upon anyone. My interest in this issue has nothing to do with Ubiquiti as a company, nor is it intended as a criticism of the company. The ultimate fault lies with the criminals who perpetrated this fraud. The purpose of this post is to capture some details for the benefit of analysis, history, and discussion.
The first question I had was: did this event have an effect on the Ubiquiti stock price? The FY fourth quarter results were released at 4:05 pm ET on Thursday 6 August 2015, after the market closed.
The “Fourth Quarter Financial Summary: listed this as the last bullet:
“GAAP net income and diluted EPS include a $39.1 million business e-mail compromise (“BEC”) fraud loss as disclosed in the Form 8-K filed on August 6, 2015″
I assume the Form 8-K was published simultaneously, with earnings.
Next I found the following in this five day stock chart.
You can see the gap down from Thursday’s closing price, on the right side of the chart. Was that caused by the fraud charge?
I looked to see what the financial press had to say. I found this Motley Fool article titled Why Ubiquiti Networks, Inc. Briefly Fell 11% on Friday, posted at 12:39 PM (presumably ET). However, this article had nothing to say about the fraud.
Doing a little more digging, I saw Seeking Alpha caught the fraud immediately, posting Ubiquiti discloses $39.1M fraud loss; shares -2.9% post-earnings at 4:24 PM (presumably ET). They noted that “accounting chief Rohit Chakravarthy has resigned.” I learned that the company was already lacking a chief financial officer, so Mr. Chakravarthy was filling the role temporarily. Perhaps that contributed to the company falling victim to the ruse. Could Ubiquiti have been targeted for that reason?
I did some more digging, but it looks like the popular press didn’t catch the issue until Brian Honan and Brian Krebs brought attention to the fraud angle of the earnings release, early today.
Next I listened to the archive of the earnings call. The call was a question-and-answer session, rather than a statement by management followed by Q and A. I listened to analysts ask about head count, South American sales, trademark names, shipping new products, and voice and video. Not until the 17 1/2 minute mark did an analyst ask about the fraud.
CEO Robert J. Pera said he was surprised no one had asked until that point in the call. He said he was embarrassed by the incident and it reflected “incredibly poor judgement and incompetence” by a few people in the accounting department.
Finally, returning to the stock chart, you see a gap down, but recovery later in the session. The market seems to view this fraud as a one-time event that will not seriously affect future performance. That is my interpretation, anyway. I wish Ubiquiti well, and I hope others can learn from their misfortune.
Update: I forgot to add this before hitting “post”:
Ubiquiti had FY fourth quarter revenues of $145.3 million. The fraud is a serious portion of that number. If Ubiquiti had earned ten times that in revenue, or more, would the fraud have required disclosure?
The disclosure noted:
“As a result of this investigation, the Company, its Audit Committee and advisors have concluded that the Company’s internal control over financial reporting is ineffective due to one or more material weaknesses.”
That sounds like code for a Sarbanes-Oxley issue, so I believe they would have reported anyway, regardless of revenue-to-fraud proportions.
I read Brian Krebs story Tech Firm Ubiquiti Suffers $46M Cyberheist just now. He writes:
Ubiquiti, a San Jose based maker of networking technology for service providers and enterprises, disclosed the attack in a quarterly financial report filed this week [6 August; RMB] with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company said it discovered the fraud on June 5, 2015, and that the incident involved employee impersonation and fraudulent requests from an outside entity targeting the company’s finance department.
“This fraud resulted in transfers of funds aggregating $46.7 million held by a Company subsidiary incorporated in Hong Kong to other overseas accounts held by third parties,” Ubiquiti wrote. “As soon as the Company became aware of this fraudulent activity it initiated contact with its Hong Kong subsidiary’s bank and promptly initiated legal proceedings in various foreign jurisdictions. As a result of these efforts, the Company has recovered $8.1 million of the amounts transferred.”
Brian credits Brian Honan at CSO Online, with noticing the disclosure yesterday.
This is a terrible crime that I would not wish upon anyone. My interest in this issue has nothing to do with Ubiquiti as a company, nor is it intended as a criticism of the company. The ultimate fault lies with the criminals who perpetrated this fraud. The purpose of this post is to capture some details for the benefit of analysis, history, and discussion.
The first question I had was: did this event have an effect on the Ubiquiti stock price? The FY fourth quarter results were released at 4:05 pm ET on Thursday 6 August 2015, after the market closed.
The “Fourth Quarter Financial Summary: listed this as the last bullet:
“GAAP net income and diluted EPS include a $39.1 million business e-mail compromise (“BEC”) fraud loss as disclosed in the Form 8-K filed on August 6, 2015″
I assume the Form 8-K was published simultaneously, with earnings.
Next I found the following in this five day stock chart.
You can see the gap down from Thursday’s closing price, on the right side of the chart. Was that caused by the fraud charge?
I looked to see what the financial press had to say. I found this Motley Fool article titled Why Ubiquiti Networks, Inc. Briefly Fell 11% on Friday, posted at 12:39 PM (presumably ET). However, this article had nothing to say about the fraud.
Doing a little more digging, I saw Seeking Alpha caught the fraud immediately, posting Ubiquiti discloses $39.1M fraud loss; shares -2.9% post-earnings at 4:24 PM (presumably ET). They noted that “accounting chief Rohit Chakravarthy has resigned.” I learned that the company was already lacking a chief financial officer, so Mr. Chakravarthy was filling the role temporarily. Perhaps that contributed to the company falling victim to the ruse. Could Ubiquiti have been targeted for that reason?
I did some more digging, but it looks like the popular press didn’t catch the issue until Brian Honan and Brian Krebs brought attention to the fraud angle of the earnings release, early today.
Next I listened to the archive of the earnings call. The call was a question-and-answer session, rather than a statement by management followed by Q and A. I listened to analysts ask about head count, South American sales, trademark names, shipping new products, and voice and video. Not until the 17 1/2 minute mark did an analyst ask about the fraud.
CEO Robert J. Pera said he was surprised no one had asked until that point in the call. He said he was embarrassed by the incident and it reflected “incredibly poor judgement and incompetence” by a few people in the accounting department.
Finally, returning to the stock chart, you see a gap down, but recovery later in the session. The market seems to view this fraud as a one-time event that will not seriously affect future performance. That is my interpretation, anyway. I wish Ubiquiti well, and I hope others can learn from their misfortune.
Update: I forgot to add this before hitting “post”:
Ubiquiti had FY fourth quarter revenues of $145.3 million. The fraud is a serious portion of that number. If Ubiquiti had earned ten times that in revenue, or more, would the fraud have required disclosure?
The disclosure noted:
“As a result of this investigation, the Company, its Audit Committee and advisors have concluded that the Company’s internal control over financial reporting is ineffective due to one or more material weaknesses.”
That sounds like code for a Sarbanes-Oxley issue, so I believe they would have reported anyway, regardless of revenue-to-fraud proportions.