Amazon, Web Giants Shift to Report Real Cost of Equity Pay

For more than a decade, technology companies doled out heaps of stock to recruit top talent — then pretended this wasn’t a normal part of doing business by reporting profit numbers that subtracted the cost. That’s changing as the industry grows up and responds to pressure from regulators and investors. Amazon.com Inc. started breaking out stock-based compensation in the results of its different businesses in the first quarter. This is “the way we now evaluate our business performance and manage our operations,” Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky told analysts after the earnings report last week. Facebook Inc. Chief Financial Officer David Wehner had a similar message. From now on, he said he’ll talk about the social network’s results and other metrics based on U.S. standards known as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP, which include equity-based pay costs, instead of a mix of GAAP and non-GAAP numbers. “We view it as a real expense,” he said.