Skip to main content

GREENBRIER COMPANIES INC

For the period ended Aug 31, 2024. Filed Oct 24, 2024.

View on SEC.gov

About this filing

A company's yearly report to the SEC, with audited financial statements. It is the fullest account a company gives of its business, its finances and the risks it sees.

FY2024 · Filed Oct 24, 2024

GBX$41.81+0.7%Stored close · as of Nov 9, 2026

Extracted filing text, with the paragraph anchors used by the comparison.

See the whole filing, with its images and exhibits

Item 9A. CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES

Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures

Our management has evaluated, under the supervision and with the participation of our Principal Executive Officer and Principal Financial Officer, the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Rule 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act)). Based on that evaluation, our Principal Executive Officer and Principal Financial Officer have concluded that, as of the end of the period covered by this report, our disclosure controls and procedures were effective in ensuring that information required to be disclosed in our Exchange Act reports is (1) recorded, processed, summarized and reported in a timely manner, and (2) accumulated and communicated to our management, including our Principal Executive Officer and Principal Financial Officer, to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure.

Management’s Report on Internal Control over Financial Reporting

Management is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over financial reporting as defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) of the Exchange Act. Our internal control over financial reporting is a process designed under the supervision of our Principal Executive Officer and Principal Financial Officer to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of our financial statements for external reporting purposes in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

Management, under the oversight of the Audit Committee, conducted an assessment of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting based on the framework established in Internal Control — Integrated Framework (2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission. Based on this assessment, management has concluded that the Company maintained effective internal control over financial reporting as of August 31, 2024.

As disclosed in Part II Item 9A Controls and Procedures in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2023, we identified a material weakness in internal control over financial reporting as the Company did not effectively design and maintain controls over information technology (IT) general controls in one IT environment in our primary North America manufacturing businesses that are relevant to the preparation of our Consolidated Financial Statements. We did not (i) maintain change management controls to ensure configuration data changes affecting the IT application were appropriate (ii) design and maintain program development controls to ensure the data migration, program testing and approval of new software development was aligned with business and IT requirements and (iii) maintain user access controls to ensure segregation of duties in our financial application. The control deficiencies resulted from incomplete risk assessment, inadequate training of personnel and ineffective control activities related primarily to the implementation of a new ERP system in our primary North America manufacturing businesses. As a result, process level automated controls that are dependent on the affected IT environment and manual controls that rely on system-generated data or reports from the affected IT environment were ineffective because they could have been adversely impacted.

During fiscal year 2024, the Company’s management designed and implemented corrective actions to remediate the control deficiencies that contributed to the material weakness. The remediation actions included:

Enhancing risk assessment and control design to address potential financial reporting risk related to system implementations;

Expanding controls and/or applying other appropriate procedures to address the design and operation of IT general controls on system implementations;

Improving policy and procedure documentation related to IT general controls to better define roles and responsibilities, improve control owner understanding, and provide a basis for knowledge transfer upon personnel changes; and

Enhancing our education concerning the principles and requirements of each control, with a focus on those related to user access, change management, and segregation of duties over IT systems impacting financial reporting.

During the quarter ended August 31, 2024 we completed our testing of the operating effectiveness of the implemented controls and found them to be effective. As a result, we have concluded the material weakness has been remediated as of August 31, 2024.

Our independent registered public accounting firm, KPMG LLP, who audited the Consolidated Financial Statements included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, independently assessed the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. Their attestation report is included at the end of Part II, Item 9A of this Form 10-K.

Changes in Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

Except for the changes in connection with our implementation of the remediation plan discussed above, there have been no other changes in our internal control over financial reporting that occurred during the quarter ended August 31, 2024 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, the Company’s internal control over financial reporting.

Inherent Limitations of Internal Controls

Our management, including the Principal Executive Officer and Principal Financial Officer, does not expect that our disclosure controls and procedures or our internal control over financial reporting will prevent or detect all error and all fraud. A control system, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable, not absolute, assurance that the control system’s objectives will be met. Further, because of the inherent limitations in all control systems, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that misstatements due to error or fraud will not occur or that all control issues and instances of fraud, if any, within our company have been detected. These inherent limitations include the realities that judgments in decision-making can be faulty and that breakdowns can occur because of simple error or mistake. The design of any system of controls is based in part on certain assumptions about the likelihood of future events, and there can be no assurance that any design will succeed in achieving its stated goals under all potential future conditions. Projections of any evaluation of controls effectiveness to future periods are subject to risks. Over time, controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions or deterioration in the degree of compliance with policies or procedures.

To the Stockholders and Board of Directors

The Greenbrier Companies, Inc.:

Opinion on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

We have audited The Greenbrier Companies, Inc. and subsidiaries' (the Company) internal control over financial reporting as of August 31, 2024, based on criteria established in Internal Control – Integrated Framework (2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission. In our opinion, the Company maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control over financial reporting as of August 31, 2024, based on criteria established in Internal Control – Integrated Framework (2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission.

We also have audited, in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (PCAOB), the consolidated balance sheets of the Company as of August 31, 2024 and August 31, 2023, the related consolidated statements of income, comprehensive income, equity, and cash flows for each of the years in the three-year period ended August 31, 2024, and the related notes (collectively, the consolidated financial statements), and our report dated October 24, 2024 expressed an unqualified opinion on those consolidated financial statements.

Basis for Opinion

The Company’s management is responsible for maintaining effective internal control over financial reporting and for its assessment of the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting, included in the accompanying Management's Report on Internal Control over Financial Reporting. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company’s internal control over financial reporting based on our audit. We are a public accounting firm registered with the PCAOB and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audit in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether effective internal control over financial reporting was maintained in all material respects. Our audit of internal control over financial reporting included obtaining an understanding of internal control over financial reporting, assessing the risk that a material weakness exists, and testing and evaluating the design and operating effectiveness of internal control based on the assessed risk. Our audit also included performing such other procedures as we considered necessary in the circumstances. We believe that our audit provides a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Definition and Limitations of Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

A company’s internal control over financial reporting is a process designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. A company’s internal control over financial reporting includes those policies and procedures that (1) pertain to the maintenance of records that, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of the company; (2) provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, and that receipts and expenditures of the company are being made only in accordance with authorizations of management and directors of the company; and (3) provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use, or disposition of the company’s assets that could have a material effect on the financial statements.

Because of its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting may not prevent or detect misstatements. Also, projections of any evaluation of effectiveness to future periods are subject to the risk that controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or that the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate.

/s/ KPMG LLP

Portland, Oregon

October 24, 2024

ContentsView on SEC.gov

The text of this filing, as the company filed it with the SEC, without its images or exhibits. This is not investment advice.