Back when I was an equity analyst I had a telecom company I followed that every quarter would blow the Street estimates up by having a litany of “non-recurring” charges appended to the income statement. The trouble was, the non-recurring charges happened every darn quarter, despite the company repeatedly saying that they were unusual items. A Citgroup analyst in Fortune this issue gets it about right in commenting on that sort of behavior:
“When nonrecurring charges happen every quarter, they’re recurring, that’s your business model.”
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