By Dominic Jones | Published: September 7, 2007 | 
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P&G’s financial needle in a haystack — Updated
By Dominic Jones
HERE’S a really, really fun thing to do on a Friday afternoon near the end of summer (winter, if you’re in the southern hemisphere).
Why not join the many shareholders of consumer products giant Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG) in a gripping game of financial Where’s Waldo? (or Where’s Wally?, if you’re more familiar with the British version.)
Here’s how it works: I ask you a question and you go find the answer in P&G’s recently published 2007 image-based online annual report courtesy of Thomson Financial and mobular technologies.
Simple game, right? Should be fun.
Here’s the question: According to the report, how much of P&G’s long-term debt will mature in 2011?
OK, now go find the answer!! (Hint in case you’re new at this: it’s in the Notes.)
The prizes: First one to post the correct answer in the comments below wins a copy of our most recent quarterly briefing on factors influencing online IR communications.
And there’s a bonus prize of a copy of the same briefing for the best first-person account of what a great experience they had retrieving the information.
P.S. You owe it to yourself to try this exercise. It’s like when you were a kid and walked around with your eyes closed to experience what it would be like to be blind. Only in this case you get to experience what it’s like to be a shareholder on the web in 2007.
And the winners are…
David Low wins for the first correct answer. He also should get the prize for best first-person account, but we thought we’d give that to Ivor Gage for his determined efforts despite technical challenges. Guys, check your email for your prize. Bill D missed being first with the answer by one letter, a “b” instead of an “m.”
Sorry to readers in those time zones who did not get a chance to play on Friday. We’ll try to make it up to you.
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September 7th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
$1,877b, as noted on pg. 59?
September 7th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
$1,877m, on page 59!
Looks like they forgot to put it where it’s meant to be, or I’m just not reading the numbers right :-)
First of all I looked for the accounting notes (as per your tip) in the index, keyed in page 54 into the page selector, and jumped to 52. I then tried to get clever and tried 56, only for the page to do nothing at all… another try and page 54 was there.
Picking through the notes of the Gillette takeover nearly sent me into Friday afternoon meltdown and an early comatose state (which usually happens around 11pm after some Friday night drinks) but several hard-to-read pages - even in full screen mode - did the job.
Of course downloading the damn PDF and doing a good old text search might have done it, but where’s the fun in that?
PS: Over here in Scotland it’s already the mid-afternoon and we’re in full blown “Friday afternoon” mode after finishing a late night job. This just injected a little fun for the office…
September 7th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
That’s a trick question. There is no debt maturing in 2011. However, the ESOP has $968 million in debt maturing between 2007 and 2021 that the company must guarantee and account for on their books. It’s not broken down further. I suppose you could call the ESOP administrator to get the specific details (if you were an ESOP member).
Note 5 - Page 59
That’s my guess.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
I went to the report and tried to search for “long-term debt.” That was useless because none of the results made sense. I tried using the navigation menu but couldn’t see where their financial statements were. Next the PDF and a search for long-term debt. No results! Either something is wrong with their PDF or it’s mine. Scrolled through the PDF until eventually finding Note 5. I tried to copy the information there, but every time I tried it pasted as gibberish.
Finally, I found a pen and wrote it down.
2011 - $1,877 million matures.
By my reckoning, this took more than 25 minutes to accomplish. If I don’t win, do you think P&G might send me a gift hamper?
September 7th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
You guys are good. I didn’t read that far down, nor that closely. That’s awful reporting. They couldn’t make it more visible.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Looking at that section a third time, I have no idea how they came to $1,877b.
September 7th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
What do you think? Was Bill D first? Wait, is that a “b” as in billion after his numbers? Via email, he tells me this is how he went about his research:
I used your link to the online version. I then used their navigation to go to the shareholder information, then used the page backwards navigation to get to the notes section and looked at the notes section on debt. Then scanned down the page to where the maturity information was.
Would have been faster to have just done a search in a PDF probably.
Actually, according to Ivor the PDF wasn’t much use for searching. Anyone else have that problem?
Anyway, I’m sorry Bill D, but I think it’s definitely millions. But you only know that if you happen to glance down to the gray text in the footer of the page.
Right now I’m thinking our friend from Scotland, David Low, wins both prizes. And if I understand him correctly, he did it after a night with no sleep!
So you have to be semi-delirious to use these, um, these documents. I guess.
We’ll make a final ruling Monday, just in case someone from P&G is checking Technorati and wants to help Will understand where they get their numbers from. Wishful thinking, I know.
Some trivia for you: P&G has a market cap of $205.66 billion as of a few minutes ago.
And a hard-to-navigate, unsearchable, cannot-be-copied-and-pasted document that probably costs $400 to make (excluding the vendors’ handsome markup) is the best they can do for shareholders?
Hmm.
September 7th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
It appears we’re to take P&G’s word that the number is correct despite the fact they make no attempt to show how they arrived at said number. I feel all warm and fuzzy with their level of disclosure. I think I’ll buy some P&G stock first thing Monday. Not!
September 11th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Yes, a night with no sleep - my vampire training will come to a successful conclusion soon though.