One adjustment that could be applied is for acquisition and integration-related activities. Hershey had a couple of business acquisitions, such as Dot's Pretzels and Lily's Sweets, during the prior year so it may be necessary to adjust for the expenses incurred during the process. These are one-time expenses that will not be recurring, so it may be helpful to deduct them. Similar to this, another adjustment that could be made is for business realignment charges. With a goal of enhancing long-term productivity, Hershey recently started a program called the International Optimization Program and incurred realignment costs like severance, third-party costs, and employee benefit costs associated with it, which can be another adjustment that involves non-recurring expenses. One other adjustment I would recommend is for their pension expense. Hershey offers defined benefit plan pensions and they estimate the amount of pension expense each year. Analysts may adjust the estimated expense based on future investment performance, contributions to pension trusts, changes in discount rates and other factors related to the employees who are covered. Although these adjustment would be considered non-GAAP reporting, they could still be beneficial to investors as supplementary information to use with the GAAP reporting.
The changes would be:_______