The SEC's complaint against former Iconix CEO Neil Cole and former Chief Operating Officer Seth Horowitz alleges that Cole and Horowitz devisedfraudulent scheme to create fictitious revenue, allowing Iconix to meet or beat Wall Street analysts' consensus estimates in the second and third quarters of 2014. According to the complaint, Cole and Horowitz realized substantial profits on Iconix stock sales asresult of the alleged fraud. In order to hide the fraud, as alleged, Cole and Horowitz also deleted emails and caused Iconix to make false and misleading statements inresponse to an SEC inquiry.

The SEC separately charged Iconix with fraud for recognizing false revenue and manipulating its reported earnings in 2014, entering into transactions to conceal distressed finances at two licensees who could not meet licensing royalty payments owed to Iconix, and failing to recognize over $239 million in impairment charges for three brands overmulti-year period. Additionally, Iconix and its former Chief Financial Officer Warren Clamen failed to recognize losses from Iconix's failing licensees, disclose that Iconix entered into transactions to secretly and temporarily bolster its licensees' finances, and properly test for impairment. Asresult of these accounting improprieties, Iconix overstated net income by hundreds of millions of dollars between 2013 and the third quarter of 2015."

In this fraud, the top executives of Iconix Brand Group Inc. engaged in earnings

management. List out the accounting techniques (accounting improprieties) that Iconix used to manipulate its reported earnings.