And you can't see the performance of the underlying business under standard accounting?
You need PR figures made on arbitrary God-knows-which principles i.e. non-GAAP?
Surely you realize that because "non-GAAP" is not standardized, company can, and they do the hell they want with non-GAAP figures?
Standard accounting has nothing to do with business performance at all.
It has to do with presenting an informative picture of all the activities of the business. Which isn't the same as the performance of the business.
If a business goes through a restructuring, that needs to be accounted for under GAAP. Does those restructuring costs/activities have anything to do with the performance of the business? Would you compare the pre-restructuring GAAP figures to the post restructuring GAAP figures which include the restructuring costs, and then derive your business performance from that?
No, you compare your non-GAAP like vs like figures, which tell you the underlying business performance, which then tells you how effective your restructuring was.
If you buy a company (e.g. AMD buying ATI) and then have a MASSIVE writeoff on the goodwill of that acquisition, does that writeoff mean suddenly your underlying business has lost $500m or something? No, your underlying business could be performing better than it was in the prior period, but you're still showing $500m of expense through the writeoff, which MUST be included in the GAAP figures, but doesn't reflect actual PERFORMANCE.
I also never said that non-GAAP could necessarily be used to compare between companies. I implied through context that it is used for comparing performance WITHIN a company, from year to year or quarter to quarter.
The Company is providing these financial measures because it believes this non-GAAP presentation makes it easier for investors to compare its operating results for current and historical periods and also because the Company believes it assists investors in comparing the Company's performance across reporting periods on a consistent basis by excluding items that it does not believe are indicative of its core operating performance and for the other reasons described in the footnotes to the selected data tables. Refer to corresponding tables at the end of this press release for additional AMD data.
From the AMD financials release in the text at the bottom that you would probably not normally read.