Definition of Other Comprehensive Income
Other comprehensive income, or OCI, consists of items that have an effect on the balance sheet amounts, but the effect is not reported on the company’s income statement. Instead, these changes are reported on the statement of comprehensive income along with the amount of net income from the income statement.
Since the OCI items do not affect the net income, they do not cause a change in a corporation’s retained earnings. Instead, the current period’s OCI items cause a change in accumulated other comprehensive income, which is a different component of stockholders’ equity.
Examples of Other Comprehensive Income
Some examples of the items classified as other comprehensive income include:
- Unrealized gains/losses on hedge/derivative financial instruments
- Foreign currency translation adjustments
- Unrealized gains/losses on postretirement benefit plans
