(Bloomberg) — United Parcel Service Inc. will pay $45 million to settle claims by the US Securities and Exchange Commission that the courier misrepresented its financial results by improperly valuing its freight business.
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The company failed to follow generally accepted accounting principles when it evaluated its less-than-truckload operations in 2019 and 2020, the SEC said Friday in a statement. “Had UPS properly valued Freight, its earnings and other reported items would have been materially lower,” the agency said.
UPS, which didn’t admit or deny the findings, agreed to avoid future violations, the SEC said.
The company said in an emailed statement that it recorded a non-cash goodwill impairment charge in 2020 relating to the investigation. “The settlement will not have a material effect on our business, financial condition, results of operation, or liquidity,” UPS said.
Goodwill is a non-cash asset companies record on their balance sheets when they buy another business and have to calculate how they came up with the purchase price. US accounting rules require companies to keep the asset as a line on their balance sheets, only marking it down when there’s a sign it has permanently lost value. Companies must test goodwill at least yearly for signs of it losing value.
The SEC’s order alleges that UPS used an outside consultant to value the freight business without providing certain information such as the company’s own internal analysis of the operations. UPS didn’t tell the consultant it had concluded that “a prospective buyer would expect Freight to generate significantly less profit after it was sold because it would no longer benefit from synergies and other cost savings it was getting as part of UPS,” according to the order.
UPS sold its freight business to TFI International in 2021 for $800 million.
Shares of UPS rose 1.9% as of 10:15 a.m. in New York.
–With assistance from Nicola M. White.
(Updates with company comment in fourth paragraph.)
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