We examine how the qualitative characteristics of a non-GAAP earnings disclosure reveal the quality of the non-GAAP performance metric itself. We measure the qualitative aspects of the non-GAAP disclosure using an index of 12 hand-coded characteristics and presentation choices that provide context to non-GAAP disclosures. We find that more transparent qualitative information in non-GAAP disclosures is associated with more transitory non-GAAP exclusions and a lower likelihood that managers will aggressively exclude expenses in calculating non-GAAP earnings to meet or beat analysts’ forecasts. We also find that the association between non-GAAP exclusions and earnings announcement period returns is less negative for firms with more transparent qualitative information accompanying their non-GAAP disclosures. Overall, these results suggest that qualitative characteristics of non-GAAP disclosures convey useful information about the quality of non-GAAP earnings metrics.

我们研究了非 GAAP 收益披露的定性特征如何揭示非 GAAP 绩效指标本身的质量。我们使用为非 GAAP 披露提供背景的 12 个手工编码特征和呈现选择的索引来衡量非 GAAP 披露的定性方面。我们发现，非 GAAP 披露中更透明的定性信息与更多的暂时性非 GAAP 排除相关，并且管理人员在计算非 GAAP 收益以达到或超过分析师的预测时积极排除费用的可能性较低。我们还发现，对于非 GAAP 披露附带更透明的定性信息的公司，非 GAAP 排除与收益公告期回报之间的关联性较小。总的来说，