Stock-based compensation is counted as an expense in the accounting rules used by public companies (GAAP). So if they give $100M in stock awards, that’s a nega

Stock-based compensation is counted as an expense in the accounting rules used by public companies (GAAP). So if they give $100M in stock awards, that’s a negative $100M on the company’s profit & loss statement, even though it’s not actually paid in cash by the company. For that reason many tech companies also report non-GAAP numbers where the profit looks nicer because they can leave out stock-based compensation (and anything else they feel like they can get away with).