In its 2020 10-K, Lowes, a home improvement retailer, revealed the impact a new comparable store sales calculation had on its annual results. On February 1, 2020, Lowe’s adopted the new metric which counts a transaction as a sale the moment cash trades hands rather than when a good or service is transferred to the customer:

“The current metric is presented on a transacted basis when tender is accepted from a customer. Prior to this change, the Company’s comparable sales metric was based on when control of the good or service passed to the customer, which included timing impacts of deferred sales.”

The change had the following impact on comparable store sales:

-For the fiscal year ended January 29, 2021, the impact of excluding deferred sales increased the comparable sales metric by 62 basis points
-For the fiscal year ended January 31, 2020, the impact of excluding deferred sales decreased the comparable sales metric by 7 basis points
-For the fiscal year ended February 1, 2019, the impact of excluding deferred sales decreased the comparable sales metric by 20 basis points

The comparable sales metric for the fiscal years ended January 31, 2020 and February 1, 2019 has been recast to conform to the current year presentation.