# Non-GAAP

Also written GAAP.

*https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/non-gaap · next to Fundamental Data & Stock Research Platforms*

**Definition:** A non-GAAP figure is one a company has defined itself by adding to or subtracting from the measure the accounting rules produce — adjusted EPS, adjusted EBITDA, organic revenue. Both versions are published, both are called earnings, and a data vendor's field labelled EPS may hold either. The label almost never says which, and the two are not interchangeable across vendors.

## How it works

Generally accepted accounting principles produce a number. A company may also publish a different
number, arrived at by excluding or including amounts the accounting measure does not, and that second
number is a non-GAAP financial measure. The SEC's own definition, in the release adopting Regulation
G, is a numerical measure of a registrant's historical or future financial performance, financial
position or cash flows that either excludes amounts included in the most directly comparable measure
calculated under GAAP, or includes amounts excluded from it.

The adjustments come from the company. Typical ones are share-based compensation, restructuring
charges, acquisition and integration costs, amortisation of acquired intangibles, impairments, legal
settlements and currency movements. Nothing in the definition constrains the list, which is the point
worth holding on to: "adjusted EPS" is not a measure with a specification, it is a measure with an
author.

What the rules do constrain is the *disclosure*. Regulation G requires a company that publicly
discloses a non-GAAP measure to present the most directly comparable GAAP measure alongside it and to
give a quantitative reconciliation between the two. Item 10(e) of Regulation S-K adds requirements
for figures inside SEC filings, including that the comparable GAAP measure be presented with equal or
greater prominence, and it prohibits several specific presentations — putting non-GAAP measures on the
face of the financial statements or in the notes, and using titles confusingly similar to those of
GAAP measures among them. The staff interpretations go further on substance: adjustments that change
the recognition and measurement principles GAAP requires are treated as individually tailored
accounting principles and may make the presentation misleading.

So the regime is not "GAAP only". It is: publish what you like, show the comparable statutory figure
next to it, and show the arithmetic that gets from one to the other.

## Where it breaks in a data field

That reconciliation is a disclosure obligation, not a data format. It is a table in a filing or an
earnings release, and the two numbers it bridges leave the company through different doors.

The as-reported figure is in the financial statements, tagged, and therefore in the SEC's structured
surfaces — the XBRL facts behind the EDGAR APIs, and the Financial Statement Data Sets, which are
published per filing and presented as filed with no standardisation. The adjusted figure usually
appears first in a press release, often as a headline and a bridge table, and much of that material
is not tagged as the statements are. Two numbers, two provenances, one English word.

A vendor sitting between you and both of them has to pick. Some serve the as-reported figure. Some
serve the company's adjusted figure, because that is what a sell-side model uses and what estimates
are quoted against. Some serve their own standardised measure, which is a third thing again: neither
the statutory figure nor the company's, but the vendor's normalisation applied consistently across
its universe. All three can be labelled `eps`. See [XBRL](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/xbrl) for why even the
as-reported side of that is less settled than it sounds.

## Why it matters here

The failure is quiet and it compounds. Joining one vendor's adjusted figure to another's reported
figure produces a ratio, a growth rate or a screen result that looks ordinary and describes nothing —
and unlike a missing value, it does not announce itself. Ranking a universe on a field that is
adjusted for some rows and reported for others is the same error at scale.

Three questions are worth asking any fundamentals source on this site before it becomes a dependency.
Which basis is each field? Is the basis the same for every company and every period in the series? And
is the other basis available, so a check is possible at all? A source that cannot answer the first
question has not decided, which means the answer varies by row.

Where the cards fall is fairly consistent with how they are sold. [TIKR](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/tikr) and
[Fiscal.ai](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/fiscal-ai) sit on standardised institutional data, where the point is
cross-company consistency rather than fidelity to one filing. [Daloopa](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/daloopa) works the
other end, extracting the bridge itself — the adjustments, the KPIs and the guidance — with each
figure linked back to the page it was taken from, which is the only form in which an adjusted number
is auditable. [Financial Datasets](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/financial-datasets) and
[Wisesheets](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/wisesheets) pull from the filings, which puts them nearer the as-reported side.
[SEC EDGAR](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/sec-edgar) is the statutory figure and nothing else, free, and
[how to get SEC filings as data](https://stockmarketstack.com/how-to/get-sec-filings-as-data) is the route to it.

Whether an adjusted figure is a better description of a business is a question for the reader of the
filing. Which one is sitting in the column is a question about the data, and it has an answer.
[Fundamental data and research platforms](https://stockmarketstack.com/categories/fundamentals-research) is where the rest of
that shelf is, and [point-in-time](https://stockmarketstack.com/glossary/point-in-time) is the sibling question: not which basis,
but which vintage.

## Where you will meet this

- [TIKR](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/tikr.md)
- [Daloopa](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/daloopa.md)
- [Financial Datasets](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/financial-datasets.md)
- [Wisesheets](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/wisesheets.md)
- [Fiscal.ai](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/fiscal-ai.md)
- [SEC EDGAR](https://stockmarketstack.com/tools/sec-edgar.md)

## FAQ

### How do I tell whether a vendor's EPS field is the reported figure or an adjusted one?

Ask, and then check one company by hand. Pull the same period from the filing itself and compare. A field that matches the income statement is the as-reported figure; a field that matches the company's earnings release headline is the adjusted one. Field names do not settle it, because adjusted and diluted are different words for different things and plenty of documentation uses them as though they were interchangeable.

### Are adjusted figures comparable between two companies in the same industry?

Not reliably, because each company defines its own adjustments and can change them between periods. Two software companies can both report adjusted EBITDA and treat share-based compensation, acquisition costs and capitalised development differently. The reconciliation each one files is what makes its own figure readable; nothing makes the two readable against each other except doing the arithmetic yourself.

## Sources

1. [Non-GAAP Financial Measures (Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations)](https://www.sec.gov/rules-regulations/staff-guidance/corporation-finance-interpretations/non-gaap-financial-measures) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2022-12-13. Read in September 2026 as the staff's current non-GAAP interpretations, published on sec.gov with that December 2022 update as the latest.
2. [Conditions for Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures (Release No. 33-8176)](https://www.sec.gov/rules-regulations/2003/03/conditions-use-non-gaap-financial-measures) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2003-01-22. The adopting release for Regulation G and the amended Item 10(e), both of which the staff interpretations read in September 2026 still apply as stated.
3. [Financial Statement Data Sets](https://www.sec.gov/data-research/sec-markets-data/financial-statement-data-sets) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2026-06-30
4. [EDGAR Application Programming Interfaces](https://www.sec.gov/search-filings/edgar-application-programming-interfaces) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2025-04-08

*Last updated 2026-09-21. A reference page, corrected in place — not a dated post.*