The financial regulator Bafin complains that Social Chain AG has errors in its annual balance sheet. For example, the company posted loans of 50 million as operating income.
Once show rivals, now crisis managers of their own company: Georg Kofler and Ralf Dümmel. dpa
Not much is left of the big “lion wedding”: A year and a half ago, the two DHDL jurors Georg Kofler and Ralf Dümmel announced the merger of their companies: Kofler’s e-commerce group Social Chain and Dümmel’s consumer goods company DS were to become a “billion company “ are created, as both explained in an interview with Gründerszene at the time.
The company construct called Social Chain AG is further away from this than ever. Since the merger in November 2021, the share has lost over 96 percent in value and is currently bobbing at EUR 2.08. The market value is currently just 32.5 million euros.
Less operating cash flow than stated
Now the joint company of the DHDL men is also getting into trouble with the financial regulator Bafin. They found errors when auditing the consolidated financial statements of Social Chain AG from December 31, 2021 – i.e. exactly in the year in which the two companies merged. The Bafin published a statement on this today.
Accordingly, the social chain posted its operating income twice too high. In one case, it is about 50 million euros that come from loans taken out, so they are just borrowed money. The company had incorrectly booked them as actual operating income instead of as so-called financing activities.
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“In two years we will be a company worth billions” – Ralf Dümmel and Georg Kofler explain their mega deal
The second case is about a further 9.3 million euros that the company generated by buying shares and also wrongly booked them as operating cash flow income. It would have been correct to show this amount as so-called “cash flow from investing activities”. The social chain has thus violated international accounting standards, as Bafin writes in its official statement.
No consequences apart from public reprimand
However, this has no concrete consequences for the company – apart from the fact that the Bafin has now made these mistakes public. According to a Bafin spokeswoman for the start-up scene, the supervisory authority is primarily concerned with transparency: “The capital market should be informed about accounting errors in capital market-oriented companies.”
In a statement, Social Chain AG emphasized that the overall cash flow was correct. Therefore, the reporting error does not affect other parts of the annual report, such as the overall balance sheet. In addition, the errors had already been corrected in the annual financial statements for 2022 and the adjustments were explained to the shareholders at the annual general meeting at the end of June 2023.
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Hardly any exits: How DHDL investor Ralf Dümmel still earns millions “>
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