Channel Stuffing

  

No, we’re talking about an attempt to shop lift a lot of perfume here. (That's Chanel anyway...one "n.") We’re referring to companies trying to skew their earnings for a particular time period. In order to make expectations for a particular period (usually a quarter), a company might push customers to buy a bunch of stuff now and just leave it in inventory for later.

The company books a bunch of sales right away, goosing this quarter's revenue and earnings. All the analysts are happy, and the stock goes up. The problem is: the company just borrowed sales from the future. All the customers that stuffed the channel this quarter won't need to re-up as scheduled next quarter. Eventually, the company has to use other tricks to inflate their numbers or, somewhere down the line, book a really weak quarter. But by that time, maybe the executives in charge have already exercised their stock options and spent their bonus checks. Someone else's problem.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is work-in-process invento...3 Views

00:00

finance- a la shmoop. what is work-in-process inventory? your company

00:07

junk in the trunk makes enema kits for Elephants . what they get stopped up too. [tower with "junk in the trunk" written on it]

00:12

just need you know big bags. anyway so you've extruded ten thousand bags. you

00:18

need ten thousand giant hooks to hang the bags on palm trees and ten thousand

00:23

tube thingies for the you know de new mall. they cost you a total of 60 grand

00:28

to produce and are not yet packaged. the product isn't finished.

00:32

in fact the rubber hosing and so on has to be made of a special material that

00:37

takes three months to fully dry. you know that African climate is hell on rubber.

00:42

you also have four tons of rubber in blocks sitting around the factory floor [ants crawl across the floor]

00:46

with ants singing to it. and you have a mile of wire you'll eventually Bend into

00:51

bag hanging hooks it's just sitting in a coil.

00:54

alright you paid for the rubber blocks, and the wire already it's just sitting

00:58

there so these elements of product are in process. the product isn't finished

01:03

completed or ready to ship. so work in process inventory really just consists

01:09

of raw materials at various stages of production. and you know generally work

01:15

in processes just sitting on the factory floor versus out the door when it then

01:19

becomes a finished goods. and just remember that concept for you next time

01:24

you're unpacking a pachyderm. [woman in white coat peeks out from behind an elephant]

Up Next

Finance: What is inventory?
2 Views

What is inventory? From a financial perspective, inventory usually consists of A) raw materials for manufacturing products, B) products in the mids...

Finance: What is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)?
1 Views

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) exists to prevent fraudulent or deceptive trade practices. They're all about protecting Joe Sixpack.

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)