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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skeeter Bug who wrote (51516)	4/16/2001 9:44:25 PM
From: Stock Farmer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 77400

Hi Skeeter Yes, "pro-forma" is one of my rants too. GAAP wasn't put in place because accountants have nothing better to do. Certain things are reported because they represent a material impact on the business. Same time, there are some things which are legitimately misrepresentative of the business on a go-forward basis. It bugs me when a stream of 71 things (acquisitions) are treated like they misrepresent the nature of the business. But it doesn't bug me that a mass layoff of 8500 people is treated like it misrepresents the business. So I'm more comfortable with this being "proforma'd away" than not. [EDIT: It misrepresets what is likely to happen next quarter so it should be easily extracted from the financials, which are best used comparatively] Alternately, the company would be better off to just stick with GAAP and let us smart folks figure it out on our own. Problem is, there's a whole bunch of people out there who want some easy pablum investing scheme to make them rich. Tab A into Slot B kind of thing. These are the folks for whom PEG ratio and ProForma are a godsend. Sheep though... gettin' sheared... ... and totally confused if they have to go into the financial statement and discount the effects of something... Our generation created designer drugs, designer clothes, designer bands... now designer equities. What's next, designer paupers' graves... who knows. John.