''Along the same lines, short-seller Jim Chanos on pro-forma accounting:

'At year end 2022, 60% of our portfolio by capital showed some sort of questionable accounting or outright fraud. The biggest fraud is hiding in plain sight which is the misuse of pro forma accounting, in particular in Silicon Valley where companies are adding back all kinds of expenses ' especially equity-based compensation ' to the P&L statement. Uber's CEO was recently crowing about their adjusted profitability, but Uber is actually losing money. Or take GE. They put out a press release on their earnings two weeks ago that had 16 pages of adjustments. So what is the real earnings number? Pro forma accounting is really misleading, particularly when it comes to share-based compensation because of its dilutive nature.'