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Note 16 - Business Segments:
The Company allocates resources and assesses financial performance on a consolidated basis. It does so because significant costs, predominately including the Research Department, Information Technology Department, and Occupancy Overhead, are shared in common by all products. Therefore, the investment periodicals and related publications (such as digital equivalents), along with supplying the embedded Proprietary information and intellectual property rights, are treated as one segment, Publishing.
The products and services offered by the Company generally fall into four categories:
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Comprehensive reference periodical publications
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Targeted, niche periodical newsletters
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Investment analysis software
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Current and historical financial databases
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The comprehensive research services (The Value Line Investment Survey, The Value Line Investment Survey – Small and Mid-Cap, The Value Line 600, and The Value Line Fund Advisor Plus) provide both statistical and text coverage of a large number of investment securities, with an emphasis placed on Value Line’s proprietary research, analysis and statistical ranks.
The niche newsletters (Value Line Select ®, Value Line Select: Dividend Income & Growth, Value Line Select: ETFs, The Value Line Special Situations Service®, The Value Line M&A Service, The Value Line Climate Change Investing Service, and The Value Line Information You Should Know Wealth Newsletter) provide information on a less comprehensive basis for securities that the Company believes will be of particular interest to subscribers and may include topics of interest on market and the business environment.
Investment analysis software (The Value Line Investment Analyzer and The Value Line ETFs Service) includes data sorting and filtering tools. In addition, for institutional and professional subscribers, the Company offers current and historical financial databases (DataFile, Estimates & Projections, and Mutual Funds) via the Internet.
The Company’s available copyright services, which include certain proprietary Ranking System results and other proprietary information are made available for use in third party products, such as unit investment trusts, variable annuities, managed accounts and exchange traded funds.
The Company’s chief operating decision maker (“CODM”) is the chief executive officer. The financial measures used by the CODM to assess segment performance and allocate resources on a company-wide basis are revenues, operating expenses, income from operations, and net income.
The CODM uses available sales, revenue, and expense information primarily to evaluate whether changes are indicated in expenses including advertising, salaries and benefits, and print production, and whether changes in expenses would be likely to cause improvement in revenues, profits, or backlogs of business.
Significant segment revenues include investment periodicals and related publications and copyright fees. Significant segment expenses include advertising and promotion, salaries and employee benefits, production and distribution and office and administration. Other segment items included in consolidated net income consist of revenues and profits interest in EAM Trust and investment gains. Significant segment revenues, segment expenses, and other segment items are presented in our consolidated statements of income and comprehensive income.
All required segment financial information can be found directly in the consolidated financial statements. The accounting policies for our reportable segment are the same as those described in Note 1.
Value Line’s customers are almost exclusively located within the United States. It receives approximately 2% of its revenues from external customers located outside of the United States.
As described in Note 1 - Organization and Summary of Significant Accounting Policies, the Company deconsolidated its investment management business in December 2010 and therefore no longer reports the investment management operation as a separate business unit. Although VLI continues to receive significant cash flows from these operations through its non-controlling investment in EAM, it no longer considers this to be a reportable business segment because it does not satisfy one of the required characteristics of an operating segment pursuant to ASC 280-10-50-1. Specifically, VLI’s Chief Executive Officer does not regularly review EAM’s operating results to make decisions about resources to be allocated to EAM.
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