By remaking itself through acquisitions and divestitures, Dow Chemical hasn't made life easy for those inside its finance department. And so, apparently, they've decided to share the pain with investors and analysts following the chemical manufacturing giant.

On Wednesday, Dow reported its first quarter results in at least three different ways -- more if you count sequential and year-over-year comparisons, noted Gimme Credit analyst Carol Levenson. You can see the results here.

The trio of results were: as reported; pro forma for Dow's $15 billion acquisition of Rohm and Haas and the treatment of Morton Salt as a discontinued operation; and pro forma for the ROH acquisition, the sale of Morton Salt, and other divestitures and acquisitions.

"Oh, and just to make matters even more confusing," Levenson remarked in a note to investors, "the company also realigned its geographic reporting."

This certainly won't do much for the perception -- even among CFOs -- that financial statements are too complex.