Quarterly Sales, EPS, or Pre-Tax Profit do not add up to the year-end total

When looking over an SSG, you may notice that the Quarterly figures for EPS, Sales, or Pre-Tax Profit do not always add up to the total shown for the end of the year.

The most common reason is because any accounting adjustments are made to the annual results, not quarterly figures. If a company plans to write off a business item or adjust for an accounting change, they will apply that against the annual results, instead of allocating it quarter by quarter. This can cause the annual results to be higher or lower than the total of the last 4 quarters.