The Woes Of Working For A Public Company

During our earnings call yesterday, it daunted on my how connected I am on the public sector. Here was two extremely important businessmen, our CEO and CFO, discussing our earnings and statistics, and I kept thinking “I hope I calculated everything right.”

My main contribution to our company is the constant currency impacts. It was never such a big issues until this time last year, when the US dollar was strengthening and we were getting hurt by our currency impacts. Now, everything we post externally has a constant currency impact associated with it.

This quarter, we were lucky enough to have “help” due to currency impacts. Certain business units had a loss, and that loss wasn’t so bad as it showed because the currency rates helped us out a bit. So I’m not sure if that will make it more or less scrutinized then any other situation.

So during this call, I hear all of my numbers being called out directly. Which is somewhat nerve-racking, especially when the investors start their barrage of questions after the scripted call. I have to admit that our CFO has a gift when having to deal with the pressure of these calls. What he says will be torn to shreds, analyzed, and dissected countless times over the next few months. We are also watching, as I’m sure he is too, our stock price during the call. Luckily, it marginally dropped, and has since been flat.

Overall, it’s been a good 5 months for me here, and I’m excited to learn the things that I have. Being in the public eye is a bit strange at times, but a good learning experience. Hopefully with the future will be as bright, and I can day take the call instead of listening to it nervously.