i still don't get it. can you be less technical? lol

Lets say you sell (on average) 10 items per week.

You have 20 items of stock.

You therefore have 2 weeks of sales in stock. 2 * 10 = 20

what? ..... i still don't get it. am i an idiot?

How about 4 million in January of 2007?

Its widely known that MS 'stuffed' the channel at the end of 2006 to hit its magical 10m units 'sold' (shipped) by the end of 2006. However, their own records show that they had only sold to consumers about 6 to 6.5 million units. So that means they were able to get into the very same channel that exists now ~4million units.

So, as the busiest weeks of the year are about to hit, you actually think it is not feasible that 2million units could be there now right after a big price drop and a proven increase in sales over the last few weeks?

lol.

Sarbanes-Oxley governs the content of formal financial statements, like quarterly and year-end reporting and SEC filings. I do not recall any part of it that regulates press releases in general. i haven't read it in a long time, and dont work in a capacity that requires me to know it so it could be there, but could you tell me what section it is in? 

With respect to Enron, they were not busted for anything they said in press releases. They were using mark to market accounting to book potential profit as current profit from deals that hadn't been completed. These were never revised to reflect the actual profit or loss from the transaction once it was complete. They were also hiding losses by masking them with transactions to subsidiary companies. These things made their stock price skyrocket and the officers of the company were selling loads of stock into the inflated price.

They weren't busted for lying in pr statements, they were busted for massive fraud and insider trading.

Also, Arthur Anderson imploded due to their complicity in Enron's fraud and their collapse exposed the fraud going on at WorldCom and ultimately  bankrupted WorldCom for similar criminal acts. These events led to the creation of Sarbanes-Oxley.

 Yes you are but good news idiocy is curable with knowledge. So let me try to cure you....

If you have 2 weeks worth of stock that means you have enough items to last you through 2 weeks on average sales.

So take average sales and times it by how many worth of weeks you have and you will get around as much items that you have in stock.

Take your stock and divide it by average and that will tell you how many weeks you have.

Demonstration:

Let's say you sell 100 items per week.

You have 500 items.

To find how many weeks worth of stock you have you divide your stock by your average.

so 500 (your total amount of items you have avaible to you) divided by 100 (how many you normally sell each week) equals 5 weeks worth.

That means you can last 5 weeks with your current stock without replenishing your stock at all (assuming you sell your average and not more or less)

Correct, and getting even more technical, only annual reports, quarterly filings, and any other sec filings have to be 100% correct.  Anything required to follow GAAP must be 100% as well.  Other financials can be estimates as long as they are clearly labelled as such.

I think this thread is slowly becoming a google war by the OP.

SOX is a hugely complex law, and very few can explain it well. SOX was enacted after a set of accounting scandals (with Enron being the most famous of them) and it dealt with a range of topics including tightening the rules on financial reporting and the relationships between industry analysts and companies. There were a bunch of bad things going on with Enron. One of them was the relationship between Enron and the Analysts community.

If you recall, a bunch of analysts were having buddy-buddy relationships with the Enron executives and Enron discriminated with the information it supplied to various analysts. Analysts which were friendly to Enron got information that other did not get. It was not illigal at the time (the Analyst could not use the information for insider trading). It was just dirty and caused a conflict of interest for the Analyst. As a result, in order to get the fresh information from the company the friendly analysts recommeded the stock and caused it to be pumped up.

To ensure that such unethical relationships do not develop again, SOX governs the way finanancial and business performance information is distributed in general, not just in financial statements. I cannot point you to the portions of the law (again, it is hugely complex) but I can explain the changes that we had to go through after the law was enacted. As I mentioned somewhere before, part of my day job is to work with the press and industry analysts - so I know what the practical consequences of SOX were. So here are a couple of the rules:

1. Business performance information cannot be dirtibuted privately. I cannot have a one-on-one with an analyst and provide any business performance information that is not already public domain.
2. All business performance information must be distributed through mass media, public analyst calls, mass forums. PR releases or keynotes or large forum engagements.
3. All business performance information to be published must be carefully verified and its release must be approved by an executive.

As you can see, there is no way a PR guy can just "make up" business performance information. This would be providing a false guidance to the market and the company could be held liable. Any business performance information (such as the number of units shipped of product X) must be verified and approved by the financial controls of the business and the executive in charge.

BTW, this is also why you'll see the companies often reffer to 3rd party data in their press releases. "According to NPD the October sales of Xbox...". If the source is quoted to be a 3rd party then the companies are not liable as to the accuracy of the data and the PR/marketing functions can use it as they please without any executive approval. 

 What's a google war?

@amirnetz

don't be so concerned with under tracking,,,,when the financial report for this quarter comes out ,it will say how many they have SHIPPED ,so usually subtract that from 1 million(which is usually the number of consoles sitting on the shelves WW)and if that number needs adjustment , ioi does it fast.