We test whether firms that exclude the effects of amortization from their non-GAAP earnings allocate more of an acquisition’s purchase price to definite-lived intangible assets (DLIA). This strategy can yield two potential benefits: it can (1) increase non-GAAP earnings by shifting...

Risk is an important earnings attribute in valuation models and the FASB's conceptual framework identifies providing information about risk as a primary objective for earnings. Managers and analysts, however, state that they provide non-GAAP earnings to produce numbers that are more focused on...

Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) Form 8-K filings provide a venue where managers release information to the market as a whole that they designate as being material. Using this setting, we study trading patterns immediately prior to the public disclosure of material information. We offer three...

We investigate whether non-GAAP earnings disclosures increase stock price crash risk. Consistent with the notion that non-GAAP reporting allows managers to downplay reported bad news in GAAP earnings and re-direct investors' attention to the more positive aspects of performance, our empirical...

Researchers frequently proxy for managers' non-GAAP disclosures using performance metrics available through analyst forecast data providers (FDPs), such as I/B/E/S. The extent to which FDP data is a valid proxy for managers' non-GAAP reporting, however, has been debated extensively. We explore...

We examine analysts' GAAP earnings forecasts and illustrate their usefulness in two prominent research settings. First, we find that the availability of GAAP forecasts has increased dramatically since 2003, and they are now available for most I/B/E/S-covered firms. Next, we utilize GAAP...

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...