As expected, Tim Cook's letter to Apple investors about the (negative) review of this quarter's financial results has already caused negative developments for the company and now includes an investigation into possible tax fraud about “misleading comments about the company's performance in China ”.
The deletion and investigation done by Bernstein Liebhard LLP, a “nationally acclaimed” investor rights law firm in the United States. The firm claims that Apple and / or its executives may have issued unfounded business information to the investing public, as disclosed by MarketWatch.
To understand the source of the complaint about such misleading comments, it is necessary to go back a few months (more specifically last November), when Apple released its fourth fiscal quarter results. On that occasion, the CEO of Ma classified the business with China as "very strong".
Our business in China was very strong in the last quarter. We grew 16%, which we are very happy with. The iPhone, in particular, was very strong, with double-digit growth.
In the letter released yesterday, however, Cook pointed out some factors that may be responsible for the drop in iPhone sales, including "commercial tensions" between the US and China, and the "unforeseen economic slowdown" in the East.
Although we anticipated some challenges in the main emerging markets, we did not anticipate the magnitude of the economic slowdown, particularly in Greater China. In fact, most of the revenue deficit in our forecast and more than 100% of our worldwide revenue decline year after year, occurred in Greater China on the iPhone, Mac and iPad.
The result of the discrepancy between these statements, as noted by Bernstein Liebhard, was the fall in the value of Ma's shares (which dropped 7.5% after the NASDAQ price closed yesterday), which hurt investors.
Despite this, as the firm intends to correlate exactly the two statements, taken at different time periods and belonging to different fiscal quarters, it is still unclear and this will be work, of course, for the company's lawyers.
via 9to5Mac
