Ail said:
9Chiba said:
Ail said:
Those numbers have nothing to do with dividends for the simple reason that Electronics Arts doesn't pay dividends and hasn't in the last 5 years at least....
Earnings per share is simply the Non GAAP profit for the quarter divided by the number of shares.......( the earnings per share on the page I linked that is)
For most industries GAAP and non GAAP numbers are usually similar and the difference tends to be one time event which is why most people prefer GAAP numbers.
However this is not true for the software industry and especially the video game industry.
The reason is that a few years ago Electronics Arts and Activision both started heavilly to defer revenue from their products to later quarter and as a result for those companies Non GAAP is a better view of how the company are really doing. ( if you look at ATVI latest financial report you will notice they defered over 1 billion$ of revenue ( they got the cash but for accounting purposes they decided to act as if it had not come in yet. ))
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Yea, forgot, nothing to do with dividends, edited my post ^^.
And while companies may prefer non GAAP (they always have), investors still prefer GAAP, simply because GAAP tends to be much more conservative in terms of earnings and income.
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The problem is that it is only true if the only difference is one time events, the whole defered revenue shit has really made Non GAAP a better view of how ATVI and ERTS works.
Thank god soon that will not be a problem anymore as I explained, the defered revenue from the previous year is catch up with the one from the current year and ATVI is actually projecting to have very similar GAAP and nonGAAP revenues for 2012 ( calendar 2011).( quarters will still be widely different but over a year the numbers will be similar)
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Honestly, I've never really looked into software companies' business models so I can't say anything. Could you show me an example of deferred revenue (I assume it's the same as unearned income/accounts payable)