There are two main &quot;users&quot; of financial statements: the companies that produce them and the investors&#x2F;analysts that consume them.<p>The problem is 15-17 years ago, the income statement got &quot;political&quot; and congress &#x2F; nasd&#x2F;finra&#x2F; accounting standards boards started inserting accounting lines in the income statement that <i>neither</i> the companies or the analysts wanted. Cost of stock compensation being the primary one.<p>Look, when an investor looks at the numbers they want to dig down to the core operations economics and the health there of to create his valuation.<p>The investor&#x2F;analyst isn&#x27;t going to blindly say &quot;oh they have negative GAAP Net Income ergo company value = 0&quot;