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  3. (1)Too often, investors focus on figures that supposedly offer insight into

(1)Too often, investors focus on figures that supposedly offer insight into

游客2024-11-06  55
问题     (1)Too often, investors focus on figures that supposedly offer insight into a company’s performance without shedding light on how it actually makes its money.
    (2)Graphic-design and printing-services company VistaPrint is a case in point. Investors have pushed the shares down over the past month because the company’s most recent quarterly results raised concerns about slowing revenue growth and narrowing gross margins.
    (3)But on that score, investors may be worrying about the wrong issue: VistaPrint appears to generate a big portion of its operating profit from fees it receives for "referring" customers to outside parties that "offer" rewards programs.
    (4)That calls into question whether the stock, even after its recent fall, deserves to trade at 20 times expected earnings for the fiscal year ending in June 2009, according to estimates from Thomson Reuters.
    (5)VistaPrint’s customers often don’t realize that they are purchasing the referred services. The services are offered through a screen that pops up at the end of the VistaPrint buying process. That screen purports to offer the customer $10 off their most recent purchase. But customers who sign up for this are actually enrolling in a program that charges them $14.95 a month for what are supposed to be discounts on amusement parks and movies, among other things.
    (6)In a statement, VistaPrint said, "We don’t ’trick’ our customers into a service that they don’t want. Customers are smarter than that. We go to great lengths to ensure that only those customers that want that particular service or offering pay for that service or offering."
    (7)The company declined to say what portion of operating profit comes from referral fees, adding that it doesn’t give product-by-product breakdowns.
    (8)In regulatory filings, VistaPrint acknowledges the risk associated with referral fees. The company said some of the programs that pay it referral fees "have been the subject of consumer complaints and litigation alleging that their enrollment and billing practices violate various consumer protection laws or are otherwise deceptive."
    (9)A careful read of the fine print in VistaPrint’s financial filings shows that referral fees are an important driver of profit.
    (10)In the fiscal quarter ended March 31, VistaPrint said 6.7% of its $106 million in revenue came from referral fees. Such disclosures about referral fees came only after prodding last year from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
    (11)But the SEC didn’t force VistaPrint to disclose how this revenue affected operating profit. To figure that out, one has to read lower in the footnote, which says that referral-fee revenues "have minimal corresponding direct cost of revenue."
    (12)In other words, they are pretty much pure profit. But assuming, say, that the company racked up an 80% margin on these revenues, me fees would have accounted for about half of operating profit in me most recent quarter.
    (13)The contribution, though, could be even higher, given VistaPrint’s own description of me costs tied to mem as "minimal". Analysts note mat referral revenue is declining as an overall slice of me business. But it still makes up a big piece of profit.
    (14)Until that changes, investors should remember mat VistaPrint prints business cards—not money. [br] The author’s attitude towards the referral fees that VistaPrint receives is _____.
选项 A、positive
B、neutral
C、negative
D、unknown
答案 C
解析 文章一开始就提到，数字并不能告诉人们企业到底是怎么把钱挣到手的，然后以VistaPrint为例，说明这个问题；其后作者在对referral fees的描述中，引用了带有负面意义的词；最后一段更是讲到，在referral fees的情况有所改变之前，投资者都应谨慎对待VistaPrint的业绩。由此可知，作者对referral fees的态度是负面的，故选C。
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