Gradient puff piece claims “it’s all about us being victimized.”
How novel. And convincing. Not since the woman representing Gradient went on TV and had to change her story a number of times in a period of a few hours have we seen such a pro-Gradient dance. In that episode, Gradient claimed that reporters only got their reports 2 to 4 weeks after they were published – and then it became evident that was a lie, so they modified their position. Herb was involved in that two-step as well, and finally had to fess up that he in fact enjoyed real-time access to their reports.
Here’s today's AZ article:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/business/articles/0416biz-mantips0416.html
Now, the part that kills me is how they are still trying to frame this as the brave little research company that could, up against the evil cabal of CEOs trying to silence them.
“…Carr Bettis, founder and chief executive officer, acknowledged lawsuits brought by Internet retailer Overstock.com and Canadian pharmaceutical company Biovail have taken their toll.
"Certainly, lawsuits are expensive and time-consuming," Bettis said. "But Gradient Analytics will not be shut up or shut down by efforts to stop analysts from publishing valid and accurate research on publicly traded companies."
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Uh, yeah. Valid? Accurate? That is too GD funny.
For those that don’t remember, Gradient is the company that issued the NFI report on Feb. 14, 2005, that got the company’s earnings wrong by almost $100 million – because they failed to include the income from the portfolio (that composes the lion’s share of the company’s income) and they mistakenly showed the preferred dividend as being due, not on the 3 million preferred shares, but on the 25 million common shares – a $50 million goof. Oh, and they even got the amount of the preferred dividend wrong. Just shoddy and dumb. And easily shown to be incorrect.
When I highlighted this directly to Donn Vickrey, Gradient’s accounting wiz head, he blew me off, and continued to use their extremely low and obviously flawed number for months – ignoring the huge, obvious math problems they got so badly wrong.
Would that be the sort of "valid" and "accurate" research the AZ paper is talking about?
I actually got that report into the hands of CNBC, along with the information on Herb disseminating the provably false info the same day it was released, but oddly, it never got mentioned. It went to Gasparino, and it is very clearly an example of wildly inaccurate and damaging “research” that anyone with a calculator and the ability to read English would have caught in about 2 minutes.
So why did they continue to disseminate info they knew and understood was flawed and inaccurate? And not a little, but by orders of magnitude inaccurate?
Why, because they are defenders of truth, and the American way! The subpoenas will likely show that they were in daily contact with a number of journalists and hedge funds at the times they issued their most damaging reports – that is my hunch, after watching the affiants, who appeared on 60 Minutes, and who were credible, bright, and coherent. Their story was believable, and I was convinced after viewing it.
And yet this AZ story acts as though things like the Feb. 14, 2005 report on NFI never happened.
Wrong. It did. I debunked it within 24 hours. Live. On the Web.
So why are all these people ignoring where Gradient very clearly did in fact issue false and misleading reports, and did in fact disseminate them same day to journalists who then used them to slam companies? That isn’t even disputable. It is fact, and I can prove it. If someone wants to put the AZ guy in touch with me, I can point him to the report, and further show, in the aforementioned 2 minutes, how wrong it was. And show where Gradient continued to use it months after they were alerted to its errors.
So why does CNBC remain silent about that? Why does the AZ paper ignore it? If there are provable examples where Gradient is lying though their teeth, why not simply call them on it, and watch them squirm? What would the defense be?
“Yeah, we got their earnings wrong by 60%, and blew the simple math, and after being shown where it was wrong, ignored it and kept disseminating the bogus report anyway – but hey, it happens, ya know? I mean, it isn’t like we said we were perfect…what? You have other examples of the same thing? Uh, well, um…er….I’m sorry, the line is breaking up….”
The information is available to anyone that wants to see it, and it is compelling and damning, and yet nobody will write a word about it.
Why is that?