There’s been a little nervous rustling going on over at GeoEye (NASDAQ: GEOY) in the last week as the company came clean about its delayed filings, as well as some new deals that expand its imagery reseller program, and announced that it delivered its first GeoEye-1 images to Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) for public consumption.

I recently wrote that GeoEye was due for their 2008 full year earnings and filings, and mused about the possible reasons why they had been delayed.

It looks like those concerns have been cleared up, much to the relief I’m sure, of some shareholders that were sweating the silence.

On top of that, GeoEye then rolled out several announcements this week concerning their imagery reseller program across the globe with various resellers, and ended the week announcing their deal with Google has now come full circle.

New to the GeoEye story?

GeoEye provides space-based, and aerial imagery and geospatial information through high-resolution and low-resolution imagery, imagery-derived products, and image processing services to customers worldwide.

This capability benefits a broad array of industries including national defense and intelligence, online mapping, state and local governments, environmental monitoring and land use management, oil and gas, utilities, disaster management, insurance and others.

GeoEye operates in what in essence is a duopoly with only one other U.S. competitor, DigitalGlobe (NYSE: DGI), and just recently launched and certified their latest satellite, GeoEye-1, which is the most accurate and detailed commercial imagery satellite available today.

Want more?

• Read my latest earnings preview here.
• OR: read my latest buy recommendation here.
• OR: listen to my EXCLUSIVE interview with GeoEye’s management team here.
• OR: Read my latest update on the company’s Q3/2008 earnings release and conference call here.

GeoEye Delays SEC Filings, Earnings Release

Let’s start with the most important news first as far as we are concerned.

On March 18th GeoEye announced that they have filed for an extension with the SEC to delay the filings of their annual 10-k report, as well as their financials because of some accounting irregularities that have been going on for quite some time.

In fact, GeoEye let their CFO go late last year when these issues started to surface.

It looks like they still haven’t gotten a handle on them.

Without going into too much detail that will bore most to tears, GeoEye is basically moving around some of their accounting that upon further review, was causing some of their sales, earnings, and other categories to be incorrectly reported in one way or another.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the impact this has on 2006 and 2007.

• Earnings from operations (2006): Previously reported: $43.22 million, Revised: $42.03 million
• Net Earnings (2006): Previously reported: $3.72 million, Revised: $1.21 million
• Diluted EPS (2006): Previously reported: $.20, Revised: $.07
• Earnings from operations (2007): Previously reported: $80.31 million, Revised: $79.18 million
• Net Earnings (2007): Previously reported: $30.75 million, Revised: $27.71 million
• Diluted EPS (2007): Previously reported: $1.55, Revised: $1.40

Like I said, the reasons for these revisions are many, but the bottom line for us is that this is all in the past, and doesn’t really affect what’s going on at GeoEye one way or another from here on out.

In addition, the revisions were minor and don’t really deserve much attention.

All that happened was that some categories of income, profit, and expenses were improperly categorized, and needed to be amended properly and therefore, the older financial statements redone to reflect this.

I can only hope that GeoEye has finally got a full handle on their financial picture and internal reporting, and that these sorts of delays and restatements won’t be happening anymore.

Finally, because of the extension and delay in filing their annual report, GeoEye’s earnings release and analyst conference call will most likely be held sometime before April 1st, as that is the last day of the extension, and according to GeoEye, they should have everything restated and up-to-date before then.

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