@art1206 , It's not enough to simply reconcile accounting...

@art1206 ,

It's not enough to simply reconcile accounting earnings with cash flows.

It is even more important to evaluate what is being done with the cash flows that a company generates, i.e., how it is deployed by the company's managers.

And RFG's case, the surplus capital that the company has generated was deployed into a number of acquisitions over time.

And the reason for that acquisition strategy was that the earnings base of the company was going backwards and growth had to be acquired to mask the contraction in the core business.