© Darren McCollester/Getty ImagesA snow-swept parking lot with no cars on March 26 in Hyannis, Mass.
In addition to accounting and corporate finance, business schools should teach would-be executives how to pull off a successful snow dance. A little winter weather, it turns out, is a perfect excuse for shoddy results. Unlike revenue and profits, there are no reliable metrics for measuring just how bad a recent winter has been, and executives capable of posting decent results in frigid temperatures can herald the challenge overcome through managerial determination.
With the earnings season coming to a close and summer almost in full swing,
Bloomberg Businessweek decided to see just how much executives at S&P 500 companies played the weather card this winter. The short answer: a lot. In earnings conference calls since Feb. 1, they mentioned "weather" 520 times, up from just 313 in the same period last year. The results were the same with other meteorological catchphrases: "winter" (340 times, vs. 172), "snow" (134 times, vs. 69), and "polar" (44 times, vs. 6).
This, of course, is mostly excusable. It was a pretty terrible winter - particularly in the Northeast - and that had an effect on any business that relied on foot traffic or transportation. As Costco (
COST) Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti put it: "I'm not trying to make excuses, but it's been unbelievable."
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