U.S. Cellular delays Q1 report until Monday

U.S. Cellular Corp. and its parent company Telephone & Data Systems Inc., is not releasing first-quarter financial results until Monday as the carrier said it found some errors in its statement. U.S. Cellular originally planned to release Q1 numbers today.
The company said the mistakes are immaterial to its results, but if adjustments were to be recorded in first-quarter 2010 results, they would have an impact. As such, the carrier is taking the time to adjust the previous mistakes before reporting the most recent quarterly results.
“In preparing its financial statements for the three months ended March 31, 2010, the company discovered certain errors related to accounting for sales tax liabilities and revenue deferrals. These errors resulted in the overstatement of service revenues and understatement of sales tax liabilities for the years ended 2009, 2008 and 2007 and related interim periods,” U.S. Cellular said. “In accordance with SEC Staff Accounting Bulletin Nos. 99 and 108 (“SAB 99 and SAB 108″), the company has evaluated these errors and determined that they are immaterial to each of the reporting periods affected and, therefore, amendment of previously filed reports is not required. However, if the adjustments to correct the cumulative errors were recorded in the first quarter 2010, the company believes the impact would be material to the first quarter and would impact comparisons to prior periods. As permitted by SAB 108, in the next filings of our quarterly and annual consolidated financial statements, the company plans to adjust previously reported annual and quarterly results for the 2009, 2008, and 2007 periods for these immaterial amounts. In addition to recording these adjustments, the company plans to record other adjustments to prior year amounts to correct other immaterial out of period items, which include adjustments related to rent expense as disclosed in our 2009 Form 10-K, and other immaterial items.”