What happened
Shares of Peloton Interactive (PTON 4.29%) fell on Tuesday after the company said it's going to be late submitting an important document to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As of 1:50 p.m. ET, Peloton stock was down by about 8%.
So what
Peloton announced financial results for its fiscal 2022 on Aug. 25 via a press release. However, the SEC is looking for an official 10-K form, not a press release. The 10-K goes into far greater detail than a simple earnings press release, but both documents are typically filed at around the same time. Not so with this year's 10-K from Peloton.
According to Monday's filing with the SEC, Peloton needs more time for its auditors to go over management's assessment of its impairment charges and the effectiveness of its internal controls. For investors, that sounds bad, and it's partly why Peloton stock is down Tuesday.
However, to be fair, it's likely that Peloton stock would have slid anyway, considering the S&P 500 was down by about 1.4% as of 1:50 p.m. ET
Now what
While the market is interpreting Peloton's announcement as negative, it won't necessarily be bad. Management isn't expecting there to be major differences between the numbers in the audited official 10-K and those it provided in the press release. And that's good, considering the company was already taking $337 million in non-cash impairment charges in its fiscal fourth quarter. Shareholders certainly don't want to see that number rise after the auditors finish taking a closer look.
All that said, Peloton shareholders shouldn't let down their guards completely. Internal controls are a big deal -- they are the procedures by which a company's financial results are tracked and ensured to be accurate. Sometimes auditors find things that require companies to issue revisions to their previous reports. We don't know if that will be the case for Peloton. But it can't be definitively ruled out either.
