The death spiral for the 131 year-old company, once respectfully known as Diebold, continues, as its stock price falls to a 5-year low today, near year’s end (currently $29.23/share and still sinking, from a 52-week high of $54.50/share), along with the additional news that the U.S. Department of Justice has now joined the SEC in an investigation concerning the company’s “Enron-like” bookkeeping tricks…
Diebold announced in early October that it has been engaged in an ongoing discussion with the SEC’s Office of the Chief Accountant regarding its former use of the “bill and hold” method of recognizing revenue.
Under bill and hold, ownership of a product contractually passes to a customer and revenue is recognized by the supplier prior to delivery of the product to the customer.
Diebold said it’s in continuing talks with the Office of the Chief Accountant so that it can determine what the company termed “the most appropriate revenue recognition method” to replace its bill and hold practice.
The BRAD BLOG, of course, originally reported on the SEC’s investigation into Diebold’s book-keeping chicanery back in May of 2006, just a few months after our first exclusive report, based on information from a company insider we dubbed DIEB-THROAT, preceded a 20% stock-price plunge just days afterward.
At the time, back in late September 2005, the stock price plunged to a 52-week low of about $44.37/share (which we’re sure they’d kill for now — not that we wish to give them any ideas) and DIEB-THROAT told us in response to the related news: “the last time this kind of deception occurred it was called Enron.”
Then came a class action securities fraud suit against the company in December 2005, as first broken by The BRAD BLOG natch, before the parallel SEC investigation first became public.
Since then, following one independent study after another after another after another, finding their electronic voting systems to be virus-prone, hackable, unreliable and inaccurate, the company finally dumped it’s controversial CEO who had infamously promised in a Republican fundraising letter that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to” George W. Bush in 2004, before attempting again to fool the American public by renaming its election division “Premiere Elections Solutions” (same pig, fresh lipstick), just after stock prices plummeted again in August of this year to $47.60 as The BRAD BLOG noticed what appeared to us, and at least one financial analyst, to be possible insider trading among a number of company officials.
Prices have continued to fall ever since — a lucky coincidence, no doubt, for those executives who just happened to unload a bunch of stock near the year’s high at $53.05 – to today’s 5-year low of $29.20.
Additional bad news arrived last Friday for Diebold when a new study by the state of Ohio found their systems to be easily hackable (again), with better news coming last Tuesday as the state of Colorado’s own certification tests, surprisingly, gave their their machines a pass while decertifying many others. Yesterday, however, the reason for the inexplicable get-out-of-jail card they received in CO may have become a bit clearer: As it turns out, the Republican Secretary of State who oversaw the new certification testing, Mike Coffman, is running for Congress, and his campaign shares the same consultants as Diebold/Premier in the state. Go figure.
Diebold/Premiere’s spokeshole, Chris Riggall told the Rocky Mountain News in response yesterday, that the company just had no idea about the extraordinary conflict of interest. But with the mission already accomplished, he announced to the paper: “Effective tonight that relationship is terminated.”
With their stock-price still spiraling this morning, Diebold is quoted by Crain’s Cleveland Business today as saying the company “anticipates [the DoJ] review will be completed in the first quarter of 2008” … Though rest assured, The BRAD BLOG’s review of the company won’t be completed by then. Not by a long shot.
Merry Christmas, Diebold!
BRAVO, Brad. You are a great patriot and a real American hero…Hope you have a great and joyous Christmas and New Years.
Happy Hanukkah, Brad.
Mr. Friedman,.. I hope you shorted this stock,.. about a million shares, stand back and watch the price plunge.
They can’t claim conflict of interests or insider trading if you write about their egregious wrong doings – and then watch the stock tank.
Happy Holidays to you and yours – thank you for helping to keep Diebold on the hook, your patriotic endeavors to restore Democracy, and bring back safe, fair, honest, and accurate elections.
You make Paul Revere look like a Campfire Girl.
Looks like they took it in the google. Reminds me of a poor helpless little mouse that got a little too close to the cheese.
Now it would be nice if they could give back the $7 Trillion George Bush looted from the US Treasury.
What DOJ?, Bush’s DOJ?
I have for years frequently repeated a sort of mantra or “spell” – “Diebold die bold.” – willing it to go down, to collapse. It was a way of focusing intent.
It was my very modest way of contributing to that good fight. 🙂
Dear diebolt one word for you…. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
haw haw , i hope those diebold crooks end up wearing potato sacks. Truth is they all jumped ship and set up some other election stealing enterprise such as VNS. google “VNS Fraud”
I am hoping and praying that all Diebold’s officers meet the same fate as Enron’s CFO. It would make a very Merry Christmas for all Americans.
Kind of sad, really, considering their banking machines work so well.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to profit from voting machines which were never engineered for accuracy over many years in a business producing accounting products just seems like a bad idea, doesn’t it?
Time to break out the golden parachutes.
Floridiot says:
What DOJ?, Bush’s DOJ?
Boy, ain’t that the truth! Something tells me the investigation is going start after the 2008 “election” and will not be covered in the media. How cynical of me.
OR…
Keith Olbermann has Brad on his show every night, right after Dana Milbank’s segment and our republic is saved in the glorious new year. That is seriously all it would take!
Well Diebold must have some of the same upper mgt. that Mosler had. Sell the stock when it was high before it fell to zipp. then stock went to zero and all ESOP employees lost all their savings for retirement. Can we say hand writing on the wall or is history about to repeat itself.
Diebold employees, you better run if you have ESOP.
The problems for DBD started upon the arrival of new CEO Wally O’Dell. He reminded me of the Tyco guy-Kozlowski-both in appearance and demeanor. He did not understand what Diebold was, a manufacturer of ATM’s and other banking machines with a superior service group. His merger of the BofA service group with Diebold was a disaster. This is the real reason behind Diebold’s decline-the voting machine scandal was just a result of O’Dells greedy aquisition thirst-he ruined the service group in the process. Sad!!!!