Pro-forma earnings

Here's an example of how companies will highlight pro-forma profits when announcing their financial results:

RAMS Home Loans Group today said its 2006/07 pro-forma net profit was $43.5 milllion, up 49 per cent on the previous year.

RAMS said its fiscal 2007 profit was in line with its prospectus forecast and that it was monitoring the likely impact of revent events in global debt markets on its future performance.

Its statutory net profit was $15.11 million, compared to $29.97 million in 2005/06.

Here's the trouble: I don't know what sort of expenses have been excluded in the calculation of pro-forma net profit, so I don't know if it's important for assessing the future profitability (and therefore current value) of RAMS. I don't know if it's calculated consistently from year to year. But I do know that pro-forma profits are almost always higher than statutory profits. Funny, that.