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Cronos Forgets to Include $234 Million Impairment Charge on Financial Statements

Hemp company restates financials and reveals new accounting errors impacting multiple periods.

February 18, 2022

Hemp product maker Cronos Group (CRON) filed an amended 10-Q restating its financials for the three and six months ended June 30, 2021. The company acknowledges it conducted an interim impairment test of goodwill and indefinite-lived intangible assets for its U.S. reporting unit, determined the assets were indeed impaired, but did not include a charge in the original filing.

The $234 million goodwill impairment— combined with multiple other adjustments— turned the originally reported $57 net profit for the quarter ending June 30, 2021 into a $179 million loss.

The impairment that originally went unreported resulted in management concluding the company has a control deficiency. While investigating, Cronos found two additional control efficiencies including problems with inventory verification:

“...while inventory counts were performed in the fourth quarter, (i) the aggregate value of items excluded from the count exceeded the Company’s materiality threshold, and (ii) human error in count execution, data transposition and reconciliation analysis resulted in inaccurate adjustments.”

Separately, the latest accounting error Cronos has acknowledged appears to involve classifying tax withholdings as income. In its latest 10-Q, Cronos identified an error in the accounting related to the withholding taxes on the net exercise of stock options that resulted in:

“..overstatements of retained earnings, other comprehensive income and accumulated other comprehensive income of $4,167, $34, and $34, respectively, and understatements of accounts payables and other liabilities and general and administrative expenses of $4,201, and $268, respectively, as of March 31, 2021, as well as overstatements of retained earnings, share capital, other comprehensive income, and accumulated other comprehensive income of $3,881, $315, $62, and $96, respectively, as well as an understatement of accounts payables and other liabilities of $4,258, as of June 30, 2021.”

The company also discovered an accounting error related to accelerated RSU vesting that dates back to third quarter 2020 which:

“...resulted in an understatement of share capital of $4,802 and an overstatement of additional paid-in-capital of $4,802, as of September 30, 2020.”

Related: TLRY, CGC, USNA, SNDL, ACB, HEXO, CDXC, IMCC, GRVI, NAII, GRWG

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