A new way of covering corporate earnings

Marketwatch.com editor in chief Jeremy Olshan earlier this month told Talking Biz News that the financial news site was “experimenting with a better way to cover earnings seasons and the sometimes questionable pronouncements of CEOs, which will be a kind of corporate Politifact.”

On Monday, Marketwatch posted a prototype of this new earnings story.

The story, written by Tomi Kilgore, is called “The Sniff Test,” and it covers the disappointing second-quarter earnings from PetMed Express.

Kilgore wrote, “On a conference call with analysts, Chief Executive Menderes Akdag said: ‘On the flea and tick category, the weather is playing a role.’ He said demand was weak for flea and tick topicals, as compared with last year, because ‘the season started so late.’

“But, as Piper Jaffray analyst Kevin Ellich noted, the peak flea and tick season goes from ‘when snow is gone till when snow comes back.’ And as bad as last winter’s weather might have been, PetMed’s latest report covered the three months from July to September, long after the snow was gone.

“Meanwhile, Ellich said, the competitive landscape has become more challenging this year with the introduction of new prescription oral products, such as Nexgard from Frontline Vet Labs and the longer-lasting Bravecto from Merck Animal Health. Ellich noted it can be a lot more convenient to give a pet a chewable pill than to apply a topical cream.”

Read more here. The story does not include any numbers on what the exact earnings were for the company.