Why Wall Street is Ignoring Big Tech's Debt

Start your own store with #printify: https://try.printify.com/72vgyfrvedkqThe first 100 people who use the code PATRICK will get 15% off their first order!Nikkei Asia recently reported that the five biggest US tech companies are carrying an estimated $1.65 trillion in "hidden," off-balance-sheet debt — and a lot of commentators have reached for the word "Enron" to describe the issue. In this video I look at whether that comparison holds up. It doesn't: unlike Enron, this debt isn't concealed through fraud — it's disclosed in the footnotes, it breaks no accounting rules, and much of what is going on is perfectly ordinary. But that raises a more interesting question than "will they get caught." If the aggressive stuff — the adjusted earnings, the leases, the stock-based compensation added back — is all sitting there in plain sight, does dressing up the numbers actually fool anyone? Drawing on the work of Aswath Damodaran, Richard Sloan, Robert Bloomfield and others, I dig into what the research says about whether markets reward clean accounting or aggressive accounting, why the debt isn't hidden so much as filed somewhere too tedious for most people to read — and why the real risk in the AI boom probably isn't the borrowing at all, but the enormous revenue it's all assuming will show up.Patrick's Books:Statistics For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3eerLA0Derivatives For The Trading Floor: https://amzn.to/3cjsyPFCorporate Finance: https://amzn.to/3fn3rvC Ways To Support The ChannelPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/PatrickBoyleOnFinanceBuy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/patrickboyleVisit our website: https://www.onfinance.orgFollow Patrick on Twitter Here: https://bsky.app/profile/pboyle.bsky.socialBusiness Inquiries ➡️ [email protected] Boyle On Finance Podcast:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7uhrWlDvxzy9hLoW0EYf0bApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/patrick-boyle-on-finance/id1547740313Google Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/62862nveJoin this channel to support making this content:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCASM0cgfkJxQ1ICmRilfHLw/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices