Non-GAAP Adjustments, Part II: Big Adjusters

Today we continue our look at trends in non-GAAP reporting, based on the findings of our annual analysis of non-GAAP adjustments to net income among S&P 500 firms. 

Our previous post recapped the report’s biggest findings for 2025 earnings — most notably, that adjusted net income was almost universally higher than traditional GAAP net income, but the “spread” for 2025 was lower than that for 2024. Average dollar value for each non-GAAP adjustment was also lower in 2025 than the prior year, too.

Now let’s look at non-GAAP from different perspective: Which firms made the largest adjustments to net income, and for what reasons? 

First, some background. Calcbench (and our invaluable partner Suffolk University) identified 2,320 adjustments to net income items among the S&P 500 for their 2025 earnings. Those adjustments totaled $271.09 billion. 

We then classified each of the 2,320 adjustments into one of 11 categories:

Every company adjusted net income in its own way, with a unique mixture of categories and dollar amounts per adjustment. Several companies, however, adjusted net income to such a large extent that they contributed materially to the entire $271 billion in non-GAAP adjustments we observed overall. 

Figure 1, below, is a “Top 10” list of companies reporting the largest upward adjustments to GAAP net income.

Ticker	Company Name	Adjustment Amount	% of NI	% of Total
ABBV	AbbVie Inc.	$13,558,000,000	320%	5.0%
PFE	Pfizer Inc.	$10,636,000,000	136%	3.9%
AVGO	Broadcom Inc.	$10,602,000,000	46%	3.9%
KHC	Kraft Heinz*	$8,928,000,000	153%	3.3%
COF	Capital One Financial*	$8,434,000,000	344%	3.1%
QCOM	Qualcomm	$7,876,000,000	142%	2.9%
CNC	Centene Corp.	$7,702,000,000	115%	2.8%
GM	General Motors	$7,131,000,000	257%	2.6%
CVS	CVS HEALTH Corp.	$6,804,000,000	394%	2.5%
BMY	Bristol Myers Squibb	$5,492,000,000	78%	2.0%

* The company reported a negative GAAP Net-Income

So for example, AbbVie made $13.56 billion’ worth of adjustments, which led to adjusted net income 320 percent larger than GAAP net income. The $13.56 billion was also roughly 5 percent of the $271.09 billion in adjustments we identified for the entire S&P 500. 

Digging further into the report, we can see that almost all of AbbVie’s $13.56 billion in adjustments came from two specific adjustments:

• An adjustment of $6.22 billion for amortization of intangible assets;

• An adjustment of $6.3 billion for gains or losses on investments.

Neither of those adjustments are particularly surprising when you look at non-GAAP adjustment trends overall. Amortization is routinely the largest and most common adjustment category, since so many companies list intangibles on their balance sheets; and adjustments for investment gains and losses were especially large this year compared to previous years. 

Figure 2, below, shows the five companies with the largest downward adjustments to GAAP net income. 

Ticker	Company Name	Adjustment Amount	% of NI	% of Total
T	AT&T Inc.	($6,595,480,000)	-28%	-2.4%
UBER	Uber Technologies Inc	($4,853,000,000)	-48%	-1.8%
CMCSA	Comcast Corp.	($4,026,000,000)	-20%	-1.5%
NVDA	Nvidia Corp,	($3,070,000,000)	-3%	-1.1%
KKR	KKR & Co. Inc.	($2,721,688,000)	-44%	-1.0%

Of course, these downward adjustments could be offset by other upward adjustments the same company also makes. Just because a company includes one or more downward adjustments to net income, that doesn’t necessarily mean its overall adjusted net income will be negative. 

Those are just a few more morsels of information about how adjustments to net income work in practice. We’ll have more insights in future posts, and remember — download the full report!