Red Hat, Inc. reported the following in its 2017 10K:
Non-GAAP disclosures
In accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States (“U.S. GAAP”), the income statements of our non-U.S. operations are translated into U.S. dollars using the average exchange rates for each month in an applicable period. To the extent the U.S. dollar weakens against foreign currencies, the translation of transactions denominated in foreign currencies results in increased revenue, as stated in U.S. dollars, for our non-U.S. operations. Similarly, revenue, as stated in U.S. dollars, for our non-U.S. operations decreases if the U.S. dollar strengthens against foreign currencies. In this Part II, Item 7, we disclose non-GAAP amounts and growth rates that exclude the impact of foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations for fiscal 2017 in an effort to provide a comparable framework for assessing how our business performed when compared to fiscal 2016. To compute the non-GAAP impact of foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations, we translate amounts from our non-U.S. operations for fiscal 2017 using the average foreign currency exchange rate for the 12 months ended February 29, 2016.

Required:

A. What might be a disadvantage of reporting trends in revenues and earnings using GAAP?

B. When reporting non-GAAP constant dollar amounts, firms must choose the constant exchange rate to convert all the numbers. Speculate as to why Red Hat might choose a rate from 2016, rather than a rate from 2017?