Baltia Air Lines Inc. (fka BLTA)

[Carsmax177]

Delta’s annual report is audited. If you are looking at the quarterly reports, those are reviewed and a letter is enclosed with the financial statements from the auditors. If they were not, they would be in violation of SEC regulations. In order to be on the New York Stock Exchange, they must be audited. Here is an excerpt from NYSE requirements:

Guide to Annual Reports

Section 610-616 of NYSE MKT Company Guide

A company listed on the NYSE MKT is required to publish and furnish to its shareholders (or to holders of any other listed security when its common stock is not listed on a national securities exchange) an annual report containing audited financial statements prepared in conformity with the requirements of the SEC. The company must disclose in its annual report to security holders, for the year covered by the report: (a) the number of unoptioned shares available at the beginning and at the close of the year for the granting of options under an option plan; and (b) any changes in the exercise price of outstanding options, through cancellation and reissuance or otherwise, except price changes resulting from the normal operation of antidilution provision of options. Three copies of the report must be filed with the Exchange.

Annual reports must be sent to shareholders and filed with the Exchange at least ten days in advance of the annual meeting of shareholders, and not later than four months after the close of the last preceding fiscal year of the company.
Further, if you look at Delta’s financial statements, there is a letter from the auditor giving their opinion on the financial statements, normally listed before the financial statements.

Most international firms follow IFRS, GAAP is commonly used in the United States. Right now, they are working on converging both systems into one. GAAP is regulations put out by the FASB on how to account for transactions to create standardized reporting. In a sense, yes, it is for comparative purposes to make sure everyone is recording transactions in a standardized way. This way it is easier to spot errors or fraud, thus giving audited statements more credibility.

FASB does not create GAAP alone. FASB is part of the FAF (Financial Accounting Foundation) that provides oversight over the FASB and works with them in creating ASUs. GAAP is not created in a vacuum, the process to is at all times open to the public and allows interested parties to provide input on proposed standard. Further, SEC was granted the power by Congress to create, modify GAAP, but gives the power to FASB to do so. SEC has exercised this right in the past, but not very often, and FASB does consider input from SEC when creating GAAP.

GAAP establishes much more than inventory, cash and cash equivalents. You might want to look at the FASB codification, a project to put all of GAAP into an electronic form. In a nutshell, GAAP provides guidance on proper recognition, measurement and disclosure of assets/liabilities/owner’s equity as well as non-qualitative information.

Again, audited financial statements are required for any company registered with the SEC. If registered with the SEC, they can be penalized and even suspended trading if they do not comply with this or other SEC requirements, or have disputes with the SEC.

As far as auditing, what you explain is what auditors can do during an audit. However, the techniques that auditors use depend on a variety of factors when planning the audit. Auditors can give different types of opinions depending on how the audit goes, correct. The type of opinion given represents the auditor’s confidence in the authenticity of the financial statements.

The only re-submitted financial statement was the 10K. If you look at the original 10K published, they state it was unaudited.