To ding not dong financial results
I didn’t know it was possible to ‘ding’ financial results until I read the Wall Street Journal:
“Companies use LIFO to lower their taxable income. But to do so, they also must use it for financial accounting, even though it can ding financial results.” [1]
This sentence certainly has a ring to it. Not knowing this financial term of ding, I imagine these financial results are so good that they, figuratively speaking give out a ringing sound, to congratulate or celebrate the work of the company’s directors.
Surely the meaning of ding here is not the now obsolete sense of pompous or arrogant financial statements, which renders the sentence unintelligible.
But given the Scottish origins of this word: to batter the enemy or to ding them to death, I suspect that the financial results of this particular company have fallen dramatically because of their Last-In First-Out (LIFO) inventory valuation. And the directors have been told to:
“Get up there an’ ding it, an’ be sure to ding it a mile!” [2]
I find dinged (or is it dung?) so much more entertaining than the mundane ‘reduced’ or ‘fallen’ used by us accountants to describe poor financial results.
Many thanks to Kristin Broughton for ‘ding’, allowing me to muse again.
[1] Wall Street Journal, CFO Journal, Inflation Puts Spotlight on Companies’ Use of Last-In, First-Out Accounting, by Kristin Broughton, 27th June 2022.
[2] Rhymes of Firing Line, by Damon Runyon, taken from the poem The Free Hitter, 1912.