Comprehensive Income Reporting: Empirical Evidence from the Warsaw Stock Exchange

Abstract

Since 2009, the companies listed on regulated markets in the European Union have been required to present total comprehensive income (CI) and its components in the consolidated financial statements prepared under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). CI is a measure of company income from investor’s perspective - it reflects the enhancement of the entity owners’ wealth. CI includes the net income (NI) and other comprehensive income (OCI). The change of perspective from which the performance is presented may have an impact on its evaluation and decisions taken by financial information users. This raises the questions of how much CI differs from net income (NI) and what problems are connected with presenting OCI in financial statements of public companies in Poland, for which CI reporting is still a new requirement. The paper has been based on literature review, analysis and interpretation of International Accounting Standard 1 (IAS 1), and a review of consolidated financial statements for the years 2010-2011 of 140 companies, listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE). The conducted analysis has been the basis for the main conclusion that the usefulness of the statements of CI of the companies, listed on the WSE, for explaining changes in entities’ shareholder wealth is very limited because the majority of the companies do not present material OCI and its components.