The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) today completed its work to improve the usefulness of information presented and disclosed in financial statements. The new Standard, IFRS 18 Presentation and Disclosure in Financial Statements, will give investors more transparent and comparable information about companies’ financial performance, thereby enabling better investment decisions. It will affect all companies using IFRS Accounting Standards.

IFRS 18 introduces three sets of new requirements to improve companies’ reporting of financial performance and give investors a better basis for analysing and comparing companies:

Improved comparability in the statement of profit or loss (income statement)

Currently there is no specified structure for the income statement. Companies choose their own subtotals to include. Often companies report an operating profit but the way operating profit is calculated varies from company to company, reducing comparability.¹

IFRS 18 introduces three defined categories for income and expenses—operating, investing and financing—to improve the structure of the income statement, and requires all companies to provide new defined subtotals, including operating profit. The improved structure and new subtotals will give investors a consistent starting point for analysing companies’ performance and make it easier to compare companies.

Enhanced transparency of management-defined performance measures

Many companies provide company-specific measures, often referred to as alternative performance measures. Investors find this information useful. However, most companies don’t currently provide enough information to enable investors to understand how these measures are calculated and how they relate to the required measures in the income statement.

IFRS 18 therefore requires companies to disclose explanations of those company-specific measures that are related to the income statement, referred to as management-defined performance measures. The new requirements will improve the discipline and transparency of management-defined performance measures, and make them subject to audit.

More useful grouping of information in the financial statements

Investor analysis of companies’ performance is hampered if the information provided by companies is too summarised or too detailed. IFRS 18 sets out enhanced guidance on how to organise information and whether to provide it in the primary financial statements² or in the notes. The changes are expected to provide more detailed and useful information. IFRS 18 also requires companies to provide more transparency about operating expenses, helping investors to find and understand the information they need.

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New IFRS Accounting Standard will aid investor analysis of companies’ financial performance