Many of the companies who have so far reported their annual profits or losses for the June financial year have started using "normalised earnings" to try, they say, and give shareholders a clear view of the company's performance.
As recently as Thursday, Air New Zealand announced its normalised earnings before taxation of $91 million, up 21% on the 2011 June year.
In the case of the national carrier, the normalised earnings were after excluding the gains and losses on hedging, something Air NZ has often done to mitigate the effects of currency and oil prices on its operations.
Auckland International Airport used a more seasoned phrase of "underlying earnings" to indicate its profit was up 15% to $139 million, while the reported profit of $142.3 million was up 42% on the June 2011 year.
Auckland Airport removed investment property fair-value increases, and some other items, from the equation before declaring its underlying earnings. The company has extensive land holdings.
In Air NZ's case, the company made an $11 million loss on its fuel hedging and an $8 million gain on its currency compared with a gain of $7 million on fuel and a $5 million loss on currency in the previous year.
While those two companies were not the only ones to include normalised and underlying profits in their reports to the NZX and shareholders, they were the most recent.
About 20 years ago, financial reporting students at the University of Otago were taught to concentrate on the operating earnings of a company to measure its performance - the line immediately under revenue and expenses - as a company could not hide anything from stakeholders.
Dividing the profit by revenue gave an operating percentage that could be compared against previous years, no matter what the period used.
Deloitte Dunedin audit partner Mike Hawken said the world had got complicated and financial reporting had, in some ways, added to the complication.
What he was looking for was consistency and transparency in financial reports. Companies should clearly outline what they considered "normalised earnings" and not try to change the definition the following year.
Stakeholders could legitimately ask why Air NZ, which had incorporated its hedging into reported profit previously, was now taking it out.
The need to report normalised earnings or underlying profit was primarily driven by directors wanting to communicate financial information to stakeholders in a way they perceived as being more "meaningful" than the financial statement measures such as net profit after tax, he said.
By following the lead of its competitors, Air NZ could be more fairly judged by the industry on its performance.
"Financial reporting has become increasingly complex in recent years."
The introduction of NZ IFRS (New Zealand International Financial Reporting Standards) and the framework for financial reporting, allied with greater levels of public scrutiny arising from the global financial crisis, had meant companies and their directors were looking at alternative measures as a way of reporting more meaningful information to their stakeholders.
Deloitte research showed more than 85% of listed or large entities in New Zealand were reporting alternative profit measures - separate from their reported net profit after tax, Mr Hawken said.
That highlighted the challenges for companies and directors in providing information that was understandable, consistent and comparable for stakeholders to digest and evaluate.
Mr Hawken had "some sympathy" for companies like Air NZ which were faced with the changing global financial environment.
"The key thing from our perspective is that there is consistency and transparency in the reporting of normalised earnings.
"That means the measure of normalised earnings doesn't change from year to year depending on results.
"It means that stakeholders are able to understand how the entity calculated its normalised earnings and what items are being excluded," he said.
