Three Wednesday-Night Reports, Three Different GAAP-to-Non-GAAP Directions: Nvidia, Salesforce and CrowdStrike

by Clara Borresen · August 27, 2026

Senior Earnings Analyst, Earnings Dispatch

Three widely followed companies reported after the closing bell on Wednesday, Aug. 26: Nvidia for its fiscal second quarter ended July 26, 2026, and both Salesforce and CrowdStrike for fiscal second quarters ended July 31, 2026. Read side by side, the three releases are a useful reminder that the phrase "GAAP versus non-GAAP" describes a direction and a magnitude, not a fixed relationship.

Nvidia reported GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.46 and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.22. The GAAP figure is the higher one. Salesforce reported GAAP diluted earnings per share of $4.29 and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $5.90; there the adjusted figure is higher, by $1.61 a share, or about 37.5% above the GAAP figure. CrowdStrike reported GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.01 and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.31.

Nvidia: the adjustment is a gain

Nvidia's inversion has a single identifiable cause on the face of its release. The reconciliation bridges GAAP net income of $59.688 billion to non-GAAP net income of $53.954 billion. The release shows a subtotal it labels total pre-tax impact of non-GAAP adjustments of negative $7.251 billion, made up of a $7.771 billion subtraction for gains from equity securities, net, $222 million of acquisition-related and other costs, and a $298 million line labelled Other. An income tax impact of non-GAAP adjustments of $1.517 billion completes the bridge, alongside a line for tax expense from the OBBBA carrying no amount this quarter.

Because the dominant reconciling item is a gain rather than a cost, removing it lowers the adjusted result. GAAP net income came in about 10.6% above non-GAAP net income as a consequence.

A second feature of Nvidia's presentation matters for any cross-company comparison, and the release states it plainly: beginning in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, the company's non-GAAP measures no longer exclude stock-based compensation expense. Nvidia reported $2.027 billion of such expense for the quarter in its cash flow statement, and none of it is added back. That single policy choice is what removes the item that, at the other two companies here, is the largest single driver of the gap.

CrowdStrike: the widest gap of the three

CrowdStrike reported GAAP net income attributable to the company of $5.3 million, against non-GAAP net income of $322.9 million. On the precise figures in the release, $5.306 million and $322.902 million, the non-GAAP number is about 60.9 times the GAAP one. Both are positive, which is itself a change: the year-ago quarter carried a GAAP net loss of $70.2 million and GAAP diluted loss per share of $0.07, against non-GAAP net income of $237.4 million and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.23.

The release names the components, and there are more of them than the headline items suggest. The largest by far is $399.0 million of stock-based compensation and related employer payroll taxes. It is joined by $13.3 million of amortisation of acquired intangible assets, $6.7 million of acquisition-related expenses, net, $0.5 million of mark-to-market adjustments on deferred compensation liabilities and $0.4 million of amortisation of debt issuance costs and discount. Running the other way are three subtractions: $14.5 million of recoveries associated with the July 19 incident and related matters, net; $0.5 million of gains on deferred compensation assets, which offsets the deferred compensation liability mark almost exactly; and, much the largest, $87.2 million of income tax adjustments.

The full set reconciles. The five additions and three subtractions applied to $5.306 million of GAAP net income produce the $322.902 million non-GAAP figure. It is worth being explicit that the income tax adjustment is doing roughly a fifth as much work as the stock-compensation line and in the opposite direction; a decomposition that lists only the cost add-backs would overshoot the reported non-GAAP result by about $87 million.

At the operating line, CrowdStrike reported a GAAP loss from operations of $33.2 million, narrowed from a $105.5 million GAAP operating loss a year earlier, against non-GAAP operating income of $371.6 million versus $255.0 million. Revenue was $1.47 billion, up 26%, with subscription revenue of $1.40 billion, up 27%. Ending annual recurring revenue was $5.84 billion, up 25%, on net new ARR of $332.8 million, which the company reports as 51% growth in that measure. Chief executive George Kurtz described the period in the release as the best quarter in the company's history; that is the company's characterisation of its own results.

Salesforce: the gap is a margin gap too

Salesforce reported revenue of $11.3 billion, up 11% year over year and also up 11% in constant currency, a figure the company says includes $456 million from Informatica. Subscription and support revenue was $10.8 billion, up 12% year over year and 11% in constant currency, including $440 million from Informatica. Current remaining performance obligation was $33.5 billion, up 14% year over year and up 14% in constant currency. The GAAP per-share figure of $4.29 was up 119% year over year and the non-GAAP figure of $5.90 up 103%.

The company's two operating margin figures show the same divergence as its two per-share figures: a GAAP operating margin of 20.5% against a non-GAAP operating margin of 34.1%, a spread of 13.6 percentage points for the quarter. The gap persists in the outlook. For full-year fiscal 2027 Salesforce guided to a GAAP operating margin of 20.1% and a non-GAAP operating margin of 34.3%, a spread of 14.2 points, on revenue of $46.1 billion to $46.4 billion, with operating cash flow and free cash flow growth of roughly 4% to 5%.

That full-year revenue range is a raise. The company states that it lifted its fiscal 2027 revenue guidance by $200 million, or $300 million in constant currency, against its prior outlook. For the third quarter ending Oct. 31, 2026, Salesforce guided to revenue of $11.42 billion to $11.5 billion, up 11% to 12% year over year and in constant currency.

Why the direction matters

The practical point for anyone reading a season's worth of releases is that the two labels do not encode a consistent sign, and that even the contents of an adjustment set are a matter of company policy rather than a fixed standard. In two of these three reports the adjustment set is dominated by costs added back, which lifts the adjusted result above GAAP. In the third it is dominated by an investment gain taken out, which pushes the adjusted result below GAAP — and that same company has stopped adding back the stock compensation its peers still remove. A screen or a summary that quietly compares one company's adjusted number to another company's GAAP number is comparing different things; so, more subtly, is one that compares two adjusted numbers built to different rules.

Every figure above is company-issued and taken from the three press releases dated Aug. 26, 2026. Where a company describes its own performance, that description is attributed to the company rather than presented as an established finding.

The US market was open at the time of writing, approximately 11:15 a.m. ET on Thursday, Aug. 27. No closing prices for the session exist yet, and none are given here.