The number of firms reporting earnings on a non-GAAP basis has increased dramatically over the last decade, and non-GAAP reporting is now commonplace in capital markets. This proliferation of non-GAAP reporting has renewed both regulators' and standard setters' interests in these alternative performance metrics. For example, the SEC, FASB, and IASB have all recently questioned what this increasing reporting trend means for IFRS-and US-GAAP-based reporting and whether these measures are misleading to investors. This increasing focus on non-GAAP metrics motivates us to synthesize the nearly two decades of research on non-GAAP reporting to provide insights on what academics have learned to date about this reporting practice. Then, we utilize a novel dataset of detailed non-GAAP disclosures to provide new descriptive evidence on current trends in non-GAAP reporting and its recent proliferation. Finally, we discuss important questions for future researchers to consider in moving the literature forward.
K E Y W O R D Snon-GAAP earnings, regulation, standard setting
INTRODUCTIONManagers, financial analysts, investors, lenders, compensation committees, and other stakeholders often evaluate a company's earnings performance using metrics other than GAAP-based net income. These stakeholders generally start with GAAP earnings and back out (or exclude) earnings components that they deem to be transitory or noncash. They argue that these excluded items are less relevant for assessing firm performance and that the "non-GAAP" performance number is more appropriate for their intended purposes. The growth in these non-GAAP metrics over the past 20 years reflects a widespread acceptance of non-standard performance metrics as a way to evaluate firm performance.Although skeptics have frequently viewed non-GAAP disclosure as a threat to the traditional GAAP-based income statement, regulators recognize that non-GAAP metrics can be informative to investors and have laid the groundwork for firms to disclose these metrics in a transparent manner. Standard setters and regulators have recently renewed J Bus Fin Acc. 2018;45:259-294. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jbfa
We use a novel data set to examine the across‐time consistency and across‐firm comparability of firms' non‐GAAP earnings disclosures. Given widespread concern about non‐GAAP reporting among regulators, standard setters, the investor community, and academics, our investigation provides timely evidence on how managers' deviations from their own non‐GAAP disclosure history, or the reporting of industry peers, affects how well earnings inform on firm performance. We begin by identifying firms that change their non‐GAAP earnings definition from one year to the next. These deviations are uncommon, but when managers change the items they exclude in calculating non‐GAAP earnings, the changes generally enhance the information in earnings about firms' core performance. We also examine whether non‐GAAP earnings are more comparable than GAAP earnings and find that firms' non‐GAAP adjustments result in greater earnings comparability. Finally, we examine instances in which firms deviate from common sector‐wide definitions of non‐GAAP earnings. We find that these deviations also result in earnings metrics that better represent firms' core operations. Overall, our results suggest that when managers vary their non‐GAAP calculations, either across time or across firms, the resulting non‐GAAP metrics generally enhance the information in earnings about firms' ongoing performance. Thus, our analysis helps mitigate concerns about why managers might vary their non‐GAAP reporting calculations.
SYNOPSIS: The Financial Reporting Policy Committee of the Financial Accounting and Reporting Section of the American Accounting Association (hereafter, the AAA FRPC or the committee) is charged with responding to discussion memoranda and exposure drafts on financial accounting and reporting issues. This response is to the SEC’s proposed rule, Roadmap for the Potential Use of Financial Statements Prepared in Accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by U.S. Issuers. Based on a review of the literature, the AAA FRPC has concluded that a move to an international set of financial reporting standards is a desirable goal. We have also concluded that continued convergence of U.S. GAAP with IFRS by joint relations between the International Accounting Standards Board (hereafter, IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (hereafter, FASB) is preferable to near-term adoption of IFRS as a strategy for convergence.
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