Kraft Heinz to restate earnings in wake of employee misconduct
US food giant Kraft Heinz admitted today that it will have to restate nearly three years of financial results after discovering evidence of employee misconduct.
Kraft Heinz said in a filing announced in the US this morning that an internal probe had uncovered errors on a number of transactions concerning suppliers and procurement, causing misstatements during 2016, 2017 and the first nine months of 2018.
While the group said that the investigation was "substantially complete", it warned that its filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its first-quarter 2019 results will also be delayed.
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A spokesperson for the group told CNBC today: "While we don’t believe that the misstatements are quantitatively material to any prior period, due to the qualitative nature of the matters identified, the company determined that it is appropriate to correct the errors in previously issued financial statements."
The company said that the investigation "did not identify any misconduct by any member of the senior management team".
In February the packaged food firm suffered a crash in its share price after announcing a $15bn (£11.5bn) write-down of its Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, whose company Berkshire Hathaway is Kraft Heinz’s largest shareholder, saw more than $4bn wiped off of the value of his own holding in the firm following the write-down.
Read more: Kraft Heinz share price plunges as SEC probe and losses spook Wall Street
During the same month the firm also disclosed that it had been subpoenaed by the SEC over a probe into its accounting policies, procedures and internal controls related to its procurement.