An unusual and unexpected one-time event that must be explained to shareholders in an annual or quarterly report, e.g., write down for a discontinued operation, employee fraud, a lawsuit, or other one-time events. Results are often presented with and without these items. The logic of excluding these items is that investors have a better notion of future performance if one-time events are excluded. Differs from an unusual item in that extraordinary items are (1) material; (2) non-recurring; and (3) outside the ordinary nature of the business.