How's this for a sentence from the Forward-Looking Statements section of the quarterly report:
The company’s actual results could differ materially from those predicted and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance.
Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: the impact of the credit crisis, economic downturn and other changes in political, business and economic conditions, including conditions that affect consumer confidence or ecommerce growth; fluctuations in foreign exchange rates; the company’s ability to profitably integrate, manage and grow businesses that have been acquired recently or may be acquired in the future; the company’s need to increasingly achieve growth from its existing users, particularly in its more established markets; the company’s ability to deal with the increasingly competitive ecommerce environment, including competition for its sellers from other trading sites and other means of selling, and competition for its buyers from other merchants, online and offline; the company’s need to manage an increasingly large enterprise with a broad range of businesses of varying degrees of maturity and in many different geographies; the effect of management changes and business initiatives; the company’s need and ability to manage other regulatory, tax and litigation risks as its services are offered in more jurisdictions and applicable laws become more restrictive; any changes the company may make to its product offerings in response to slowing growth; the regulatory, intellectual property, competitive and other risks specific to Skype; the competitive, regulatory, credit card association, and other risks specific to PayPal and Bill Me Later, especially as PayPal continues to expand geographically; the company’s ability to upgrade and develop its systems, infrastructure and customer service capabilities at reasonable cost; and the company’s ability to maintain site stability and performance on all of its sites while adding new products and features in a timely fashion.
Talk about covering all bases!
