Detective work needed to decipher Tyco's (TYC) earnings report

Tyco's (NYSE: TYC) before the bell earnings announcement has all the wirehouses and analysts telling investors different stories. Due to a variety of "one-time charges," deciphering the true earnings per share for the company takes detective work.

The primary one-time charge for the company was the settlement of a class-action lawsuit related to the company's former CEO and convicted felon Dennis Kozlowski.

But analysts and companies tend to not count one-time charges simply because, as the name implies, they only occur one time. Due to this fact, the theory is that companies should back these charges out in order to give a more normalized and realistic figure.

Tyco's EPS figure came in at 55 cents per share ex-one time charges. This figure, compared to last year's 49 cents per share and above estimates for 48 cents per share seems to be a rather significant beat. However, there's still a variety of opinions on this figure -- one analyst report I read came out with an "EPS from continuing operations figure around 48 cents per share."

Basically, the Tyco earnings report is so confusing that you better really understand why you own this stock or you could get hurt. The company, even after breaking-up into three parts, remains a very interesting segment with many moving parts. As a result, it seems like every earnings report is loaded with accounting jargon, backing out certain figures, not counting certain figures, and so on. While I'm certainly not asserting that the company is doing anything wrong, I think there are certainly easier situations to analyze.