Dear Jason,

Thanks for the excellent summary. I will share it with my finance and accounting students who will be taking my courses on financial analysis and valuation at the Singapore Management University.

Frankly all the points you mentioned in the post are in my course curriculum (and I believe accounting/finance professors at many other universities are doing the same). For example, I always require students to use company's "reported" financial statements, rather than the generalized statements from commercial databases. Accounting distortion adjustment is also an important part of their financial analysis and valuation project work. I am happy to say that more and more students start to appreciate the importance of accounting knowledge in financial analysis and valuation, although some are still reluctant to study accounting in depth.

Regarding the Apples-to-Apples comparison, I understand that neither IFRS nor USGAAP requires cash flow statement for the quarter. But in Singapore, the Singapore Exchange listing manual requires both the quarterly and cumulative cash flow statements. So it is easier to do quarterly comparison for Singapore companies.

Thank you and best regards,
Jiwei