By The Associated Press
Friday, September 18, 2009
Overstock.com Inc. received another subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission linked to the agency's investigation into the online discount retailer's financial restatements for fiscal years 2006 through 2008.
The company said Thursday the subpoena covers documents related to the restatements and to Overstock's billings to its partners in the fourth quarter of 2008. The SEC also has subpoenaed documents covering Overstock's accounting for and implementation of software the company used to track customer refunds and credits.
The company has had a history of financial restatements linked to accounting errors. In February 2006, Overstock.com said it would restate results going back to 2002 to correct how it accounted for freight costs. In May 2006, the SEC subpoenaed documents covering Overstock.com's accounting policies, financial estimates and communications relating to analysts, among other items. In June 2008, the company said it was told by the SEC's Salt Lake District Office that it had completed its investigation and didn't plan to recommend any enforcement action.
Then in October 2008, Overstock.com said it would restate results for several years due to an accounting system upgrade in 2005 that did not record some transactions properly and made other errors. The restatements, which covered fiscal years 2003 to 2007 and the first two quarters of 2008, reduced revenue over the five-and-a-half-year period by $12.9 million and enlarged the company's cumulative loss by $10.3 million.
"All of the matters that are the subject of the subpoena have been thoroughly disclosed and we are disappointed, given the extensive public disclosures Overstock has previously made, that the SEC, given all of the challenges it faces, has apparently chosen to expend time and resources on another investigation of Overstock," said Overstock.com Chairman and CEO Patrick Byrne, in a statement Thursday.
Overstock said it intends to cooperate fully with the investigation.