Truth-Telling "MATTERS"!

On Mattersight.com's investors' community section of its corporate website, under a tab called "Stock Quotes", it provides some stock trading lookup tools. That tool generated the stock price graph from 2000 to present which appeared in my last post.

When I went to create a five year chart, Mattersight offered me the option of adding "event" markers to the chart, to help me interpret its NASDAQ common stock price movements. One of those event tags is "Earnings" -- so you know I HAD to select that particular overlay(!).

Below are the results, followed by my correction thereto -- to restate the chart for the fact that each arrow is upside down (click the chart to enlarge it). More importantly, my corrections explain the notion that decreasing loss-levels are not equal -- in any sense of the GAAP term -- to increases in GAAP earnings.



In sum, I think the entire Mattersight-generated chart is egregiously and materially misleading. Do see below -- but in my experienced eye, it reflects a cultural problem at the company. And I think the culture of fast and loose with financial truths starts at the top. The CEO is a CPA afterall. In short, he knows better.

There is no indication that I could find that would let the visitor know the chart does not refer to any GAAP measure, of any sort. In fact, there are no footnotes at all to the chart. That's troubling.

Someone ought to show the SEC's Corporate Finance, Disclosure Policy and Market Regulations staffers this chart -- scratch that -- maybe I will just forward it on, later today, by secure e-mail.