From where my ignorant butt sits, it may be the capex opex thing mentioned earlier. And maybe shifting money from one bucket to another strategically so the dates don't overlap when they are reported. Trim $5 billion from opex while spending $5 billion on capex. Then report the opex trimming goal as achieved. Everybody celebrates. Stock market approves. Then the first day of the next cycle report the $5 billion spent on capex. Maybe the stock market goes "Yay, they're getting ready to grow and innovate." and it jumps again. Could be why you hear all of the stuff has been approved and is going through but is never finalized until a later date. What do you bet the later dates are strategically chosen. At some point the chickens will come home roost.
I can't wrap my brain around it. Every time they cut the budget down to the bone, they blow billions of dollars on another project. "Oh no... one is capex and one is opex. Two totally different things."
I am so stupid because all I see is one company saved $5 billion dollars here to spend $5 billion dollars there. People do it every week for things like taking a vacation or even going to the movies.. "Hey family, let's not have steak tonight so we can go to the movies next weekend." And then you tell everybody proudly how you saved $80 this week on your food budget. And yet you blew $80 on movies the very next week. "Oh no that's the food budget. The other one is the vacation budget. Besides that was our last fiscal week where we had a huge $80 cut in expenses showing how responsible we are. The next fiscal week is when we spent $80 on movies to show how caring we are by providing quality family time that we can all enjoy.
As the saying goes, "A penny saved is a penny spent somewhere else."
"But they can't use the money from one to fund the other."
Please.... Have you met Verizon?
Search the public records. Law suits, regulatory fines, IRS investigations, transparency issues. Overvaluing or undervaluing properties using fuzzy math.
This is not new for Verizon. It's all a shell game. The truth is there in the court documents. Although I think Verizon officially disagreed with every decision against them it was still a decision made by reviewing the details and fact behind how Verizon hits goals.
Why do you think so few know what other people or organizations do? They are all pieces on the board and only the gamer can see all of the pieces at the same time to know they are all working together towards that final goal with each piece having probable deniability if they get caught.