That's negative investment value, not investment income.
On Wed, Nov 9, 2022, 2:36 PM Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Nov 9, 2022 at 10:37 AM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Dear WMF Finance staff,
I inquired over a week ago on Meta-Wiki why the WMF is reporting a negative investment income (–$12 million). There has been no answer to date.[1]
I am a layperson, but how can an investment income be negative? Would you mind sharing what this is about?
You probably didn't get a prompt answer because "how can investment income be negative" is something you could have Googled before asking the finance team.
Investments can lose value.* The US stock market has lost a tremendous amount of value over the last year, so it would not be surprising that most investments would have a negative return recently.
https://www.finra.org/investors/investing/investing-basics/risk
I was also surprised to find that the reported increase in net assets for
the 2021–2022 financial year was "only" $8.2 million. The third-quarter F&A tuning session published in May (based on data as of March 31) forecast a far higher surplus, with an increase in net assets of $25.9 million.[2]
Would you mind sharing what happened in the fourth quarter to reduce the surplus by so much?
Best wishes, Andreas
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_reports/Financial/... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AF%26A_Tuning_Session_...
On Tue, Nov 1, 2022 at 3:45 PM Andreas Kolbe jayen466@gmail.com wrote:
Dear all,
The WMF's audited financial statements are now available here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/2/26/Wikimedia_Foundation_...
Some key figures from the page numbered 4 (page 6 in the pdf):
– Net invest income was negative: –$12M (down $16M) – Total support and revenue was $155M (down $8M due to that negative investment income) – Total expenses were $146M (up $34M) – Salaries and wages were $88M (up $20M) – Net assets at end of year increased by $8M
For reference, the end-of-year increase in net assets forecast in the third-quarter Finance & Administration tuning session deck published in May 2022 was $25.9M:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AF%26A_Tuning_Session_...
Best, Andreas
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