How Uber and Lyft Use Adjusted Financial Metrics to Tell Their Story

For decades, companies have used customized or adjusted financial metrics to help tell the story of their business performance. These measures, dubbed non-GAAP metrics, do not conform to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and typically appear outside of official financial statements. Join Nerissa Brown, Associate Professor of Accountancy, and PwC Faculty Fellow at Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois as she discusses the nature of non-GAAP metrics and the disclosure regulation that governs their use, the value of non-GAAP metrics to investors and other financial statement users, and common pitfalls in using these measures. 

Nerissa Brown is Associate Professor of Accountancy and PwC Faculty Fellow in the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a former academic fellow of the Office of the Chief Accountant at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE). Nerissa teaches a graduate course on financial reporting standards and is the incoming academic director of BSA/MAS programs at Gies.

Nerissa’s research focuses broadly on corporate financial reporting issues. For example, her work has examined the quality of non-GAAP financial metrics and how these measures are used by managers, investors, and equity analysts. Her most recent work applies machine learning and big data techniques to detect financial fraud and to better understand firm’s financial disclosure practices. Her research is published in elite journals, including the Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, Management Science, and Journal of Business Ethics, and has been featured in leading media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, and The CFO Journal. Nerissa holds a Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Maryland and earned her B.S. and M.S. degrees in accounting from the University of the West Indies (Jamaica). She serves on the editorial board of Journal of Business, Finance & Accounting, and has received multiple awards for excellence in research and teaching.