Net income is Upwork Inc.'s GAAP bottom line, revenue less every cost including stock-based compensation, interest, tax, depreciation and one-off items, as stated in the audited income statement and reported as a net loss when negative.
Net income, or net loss, is the last line of the income statement in the Form 10-Q and 10-K and is tagged in XBRL, so it can be read for every quarter since the 2018 IPO from the SEC's company-facts data. It is GAAP: unlike adjusted EBITDA, it includes stock-based compensation, interest income and expense, income taxes, depreciation and amortisation, and anything unusual that happened in the period, such as a restructuring charge or a gain or loss on the company's debt. The quarter-by-quarter series on the Pulse page shows the years of net losses after listing and the turn to profit without needing a narrative.
The relationship with adjusted EBITDA is the thing to understand. Every earnings release reconciles the two, and the gap is mostly stock-based compensation, which is why a company can post a record adjusted EBITDA and a modest net income in the same quarter. Net income is also affected by items that have nothing to do with the marketplace, such as a tax valuation allowance being released, so a single quarter can jump for accounting reasons.
Net income per share, diluted, is the figure analysts quote as EPS. Upwork gives guidance on a non-GAAP version of it, not the GAAP one, so the guided number and the reported bottom line are not the same measure.
How Upwork Insights uses it
The Pulse page table carries GAAP net income for every quarter since the IPO, read from the XBRL company facts, with the fourth quarter derived as the full year less the first three quarters. It sits in the last column beside adjusted EBITDA; the method is in methodology, section 4.