Got a question for you, Rechnerhand.
Why do CPA's rarely do individual income taxes?
The boss man at a corporation will usually or often have his income tax returns done in conjunction with an audit but we riffraff will have a lawyer or public accountant or auto mechanic :-) do our taxes if we don't do it ourselves.
I confess to foolishly doing my own taxes largely because of academic credits that would have qualified me for a CPA exam if I had requisite public accounting experience. The reason that I took such courses many years ago was because I was expecting to be outsourced with a rare specialty. Never happened.
It has actually been costly to do my own taxes but, well, you know...
My point for this is that I believe financial reports are very technical documents that few laymen are qualified to judge objectively without considerable study. While modified versions of cash flow analysis are all the rage, it is surprising to find Warren Buffett still [wisely IMHO] uses the old fashioned p/e ratio. In my view that reflects Buffett's view that one should use one's knowledge and experience alongside deep study of a prospective investment to make buy/sell decisions.
There is an excellent reason for giving the bottom line of earning reports of natural resources corporations, particular, short shrift. Favorable tax law work wonders for corporations overall but particularly for those involved in such efforts. GE uses such favors to have a negative income tax while reporting huge profits.
All that said, I am rather awed by HTM's ability to report earnings at its stage of development and am not awed at all by ORA whatever they are reporting these days. Few know that ORA is essentially an Israeli, rather than American, corporation with very unhappy shareholders in Israel. Their bifurcated business as both a contractor building plant for others and owning some itself has been a weakness by most accounts.
In the future I would expect it might be likely that HTM's current profitable reports could turn red if HTM is very aggressive in building its business - which I would encourage.
Obviously all is JMO.
Best, Terry
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