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AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

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Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#81
post #23

Are they really "trying to hide" this debt? I think it's pretty common knowledge that a lot of these companies are using debt/bonds for funding. The debt not showing up where the author wants is a reporting formality not an attempt to hide it.

> The debt not showing up where the author wants is a reporting formality not an attempt to hide it. Couldn't you characterize Enron that way? The liabilities are there, you "just" have to look at Raptor II or whatever!

[deleted]

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#82
post #23

Are they really "trying to hide" this debt? I think it's pretty common knowledge that a lot of these companies are using debt/bonds for funding. The debt not showing up where the author wants is a reporting formality not an attempt to hide it.

> The debt not showing up where the author wants is a reporting formality not an attempt to hide it. Couldn't you characterize Enron that way? The liabilities are there, you "just" have to look at Raptor II or whatever!

[dead]

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#83
post #56

As long as this debt does not make it into life insurance and pension funds, we are fine. The trouble is that private credit is taking control of some life insurance companies and off-loads this debt to these. When these fail, it will become everyone's problem. > Risks to financial stability may also stem from entities with particularly high exposure to private credit markets, such as insurers influenced by private e…

I disagree - high leverage inherently makes systems less stable.

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#86
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that it’s not showing up on the standard financial filings. If you were to pull the annual reports for these companies, you wouldn’t see it. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to find it. Obviously, it is otherwise the article wouldn’t have been written. But you’re going to have to go the extra mile. To be clear, none of this is illegal. It’s just covered in the advanced CFO accounting class.

It's not hidden at all. Financial blogs very accessible to laymen like Matt Levine's Money Stuff have talked about this structure months ago. If you are an investor and surprised by this news you weren't sufficiently prepared and shouldn't have been investing in the first place.

What's the purpose of keeping it off the balance sheet if not to hide it?

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#88
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the businessmen who sat on the dais at Trump's inauguration plan to just fail without getting him to put his small thumbs on the scales?

It has nothing to do with the administration. These companies did the same thing with the last, and they will do the same thing with the next.

You could say this but the previous administration was not talking about taking a 10% share in both companies; this one is (thanks to Sam Altman's very personal lobbying of the president)

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#89
post #50
post #23

Are they really "trying to hide" this debt? I think it's pretty common knowledge that a lot of these companies are using debt/bonds for funding. The debt not showing up where the author wants is a reporting formality not an attempt to hide it.

If it didn't matter, why would they bother jumping through hoops to keep the debt off their balance sheet? In the run-up to 2008 a big factor in the bubble forming was that poor quality loans were packaged in a way to hide the risk in those investments. I'm not expert enough in finance to know if it's the case now, but we do know that clever accounting to hide debt can lead to the incorrect valuation of assets, poten…

They're not jumping through any hoops, I think they're simply complying with reporting requirements. It's not on their balance sheet because being recorded as strait debt would itself be misleading. My understanding is that these sort of off-balance sheet "debt" is mostly in the form of deal terms that may or may not be expressed at some point in the future.

An analogy that comes to mind is when companies used to book future sales in the present. They got in trouble for this and is now forbidden. I recall reading that one deal had terms that transferred assets if certain conditions were not met. If terms-based debt should be booked now, then terms-based assets should as well. This stuff makes my head hurt.

Either way, as long as it's not hidden (and it's not for the public companies), then it's fine.

Re: AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt

#90
post #62
post #56

As long as this debt does not make it into life insurance and pension funds, we are fine. The trouble is that private credit is taking control of some life insurance companies and off-loads this debt to these. When these fail, it will become everyone's problem. > Risks to financial stability may also stem from entities with particularly high exposure to private credit markets, such as insurers influenced by private e…

Couldn't it be a problem given the concentration of the S&P in these companies? At this point these companies make up a huge portion of 401k's for a huge chunk of Americans. How would it affect retirees if they dropped 40-50%, likely taking the market with them?

NVidia makes up 7.5% of the SP500. If it lost 50%, it would be a 3% loss for the index. The concentration is bad, but it would not cause a drop of 50% retirement funds by itself. If you take an all world index, it's even less.

Still, if NVidia lost 50% of their market share, we would probably see a big collapse of the stock market.

EDIT: to note, the top ten companies in SP500 make up an unprecedented concentration but they're not "mostly AI".

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