<story><title>Lies, Damned Lies, and Stock-Based Compensation</title><url>https://tanay.substack.com/p/lies-damned-lies-and-stock-based</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>cletus</author><text>So people have a tendency to read a headline&amp;#x2F;submission title like this and without reading the article they launch onto their soapbox about their pet issue like, for example, equity compensation at startups should be treated as being worth $0 if the company is not listed.&lt;p&gt;The article isn&amp;#x27;t about that. It&amp;#x27;s about companies misrepresenting their expenses by not accounting for stock-based compensation (&amp;quot;SBC&amp;quot;) costs, which is completely fair. Google and Facebook (quoted in the article) do. Others (eg Workday, Splunk, Okta and Atlassian are quoted) seem to muddy the waters by stating they&amp;#x27;re unprofitable on a GAAP basis (which includes SBC since 2004) but profitable on a non-GAAP basis (where SBC isn&amp;#x27;t treated as an expense, I assume?).&lt;p&gt;So, caveat emptor for investors, basically.</text></comment>
<story><title>Lies, Damned Lies, and Stock-Based Compensation</title><url>https://tanay.substack.com/p/lies-damned-lies-and-stock-based</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>otoburb</author><text>We should be glad that public companies are forced to comply with FASB and issue GAAP financials that (since 2004) mandate that stock-based compensation be classified as a non-cash expense. By definition, non-GAAP figures are up to the company to specify and state, which indeed means that investors should be &lt;i&gt;actively&lt;/i&gt; updating their own models when making investment decisions if looking at non-GAAP.</text></comment>