I wanted to give users a head’s up that FactSet deducts preferred dividend payments from EPS, Net Income, ROE%, Net margin, and so on. That’s why, for example, the latest annual net income for Ashford (AINC) is negative $46 million in our database, while the company’s annual income statement says it was negative $10 million. This isn’t in our current documentation, but we’re planning to fix it.
In my opinion, this is exactly the right thing to do. Compustat was deducting preferred dividend payments from EPS but not from Net Income or related factors. In my opinion, they should be deducted from both, since they function very much like interest expenses on debt.
If you compare FactSet’s EPS estimates to their GAAP EPS, this is definitely something to watch for. EPS estimates do not take preferred dividend payments into account.