The Forecast On Quarterly Reporting

(MENAFN- EIN Presswire) Every few years, the question arises as to whether quarterly reporting is the optimal timeframe for U.S. public companies. Now, with both President Donald Trump and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Paul Atkins as active proponents of ending quarterly SEC reporting, regulatory reform seems more likely than ever before. Thanks to experimentation with reporting frequency in the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK), it is possible to make a few observations about potential reforms and a few predictions as to how regulatory change would affect financial reporting in practice.

Overall, reducing reporting from a quarterly to a semi-annual schedule is likely to have less effect than either its critics fear or its proponents hope, as demonstrated by the EU and UK experience. Revising the mandatory reporting schedule will not, on its own, remove short-termism from the capital markets. And it will not suffice to reverse the long and troubling decline in the number of public companies in the United States. However, it would be a step in the right direction.

Quarterly Reporting and Quarterly Guidance

Public companies in the United States have been required to file quarterly reports since 1970. These reports include unaudited financial statements, earnings-per-share results, and the accompanying management's discussion and analysis, along with any other material information that is due to be timely reported. The EU and the UK shifted to mandatory quarterly reporting in the mid-2000s, only to revert to six-month reporting requirements in the 2010s. However, even after the return to semi-annual reporting, some companies, particularly large multinational corporations, continued to produce some form of quarterly reporting in response to investor demand.

In addition to the information required to be contained in quarterly reports, many companies have voluntarily provided quarterly earnings guidance as part of their investor communications since the 1990s, when the passage of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act established a safe harbor for forward-looking statements accompanied by appropriate cautionary language. Regulation FD, adopted and implemented in 2000, required that any forward-looking guidance be released publicly if released privately, which further encouraged guidance to be delivered in a predictable and formal manner. Over the years, a number of high-profile opponents of the practice of providing earnings guidance (including Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett ) have lamented its effect in encouraging short-termism to the detriment of the longer-term interests of the shareholders, the enterprise, and society more generally. In fact, the number of S&P 500 companies providing quarterly earnings guidance has been falling: From a high of 50% in 2004, it hit a low of 19% in 2024 . However, a recent report noted that 112 S&P 500 companies issued earnings per share (EPS) guidance for 2025 third quarter, while 264 S&P 500 companies issued EPS guidance for the current fiscal year. If a significant number of companies continue to provide earnings guidance, particularly on a quarterly basis, the proposed change to require only semi-annual periodic reporting is likely to have a very limited effect. Though earnings guidance is provided by companies in response to investor demand (and is not legally required), farther-reaching reforms than those currently contemplated could require companies to situate any earnings guidance in the context of long-term strategic planning, which would be helpful regardless of whether guidance were provided quarterly or semi-annually.

Earnings Calls

A key element of the U.S. quarterly reporting schedule are the earnings calls that take place simultaneously with or shortly after the release of quarterly earnings and often precede the filing of the company's 10-Q by a few days or more. These interactive briefings are high-stakes performances for CEOs and CFOs, as missteps can have immediate repercussions on their company's stock price. Company executives, with broad-based support from employees in finance, legal, investor relations, and communications, prepare extensively for these quarterly calls. It is common to begin preparations at least two weeks in advance, meaning that for a minimum of two months each year, a significant amount of corporate time and energy is spent preparing and delivering earnings information to the market-time and energy that could be spent focusing on substantive priorities and executing on strategic goals.

A meaningful benefit of eliminating quarterly reporting requirements would be for earnings calls to follow suit and move to a semi-annual schedule. This would reduce a substantial burden on senior management and be a material step toward reducing short-termism. Earnings calls arose in the 1990s initially as brokerage information sessions, and companies eventually took over the practice themselves to control their narrative and communicate directly with institutional investors and analysts; after Regulation FD took effect, the calls were no longer insider events but public performances. The practice is now common globally, and, notably, conforms to a company's reporting schedule: In the EU and UK, companies generally hold earnings calls semi-annually, with large multinational corporations that choose to report quarterly also holding earnings calls on a quarterly timetable.

An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

During his first term, President Trump called on the SEC to study a possible shift from quarterly to semi-annual reporting. The SEC, then chaired by Jay Clayton, formally requested public comment on the issue and hosted a roundtable in 2019 on short-term/long-term public company management, the periodic reporting system, and regulatory requirements, though it took no further action. This time, President Trump has pushed directly for reform, posting on social media on September 15: “Subject to SEC Approval, Companies and Corporations should no longer be forced to 'Report' on a quarterly basis (Quarterly Reporting!), but rather to Report on a Six (6) Month Basis.” Chairman Atkins stated shortly thereafter that the SEC will propose a rule change that would enable companies to choose between quarterly and semi-annual reporting, allowing market forces to determine the flow of information.

The topic had resurfaced even before President Trump's statement on Truth Social. Earlier this year, Nasdaq released a white paper addressing the worrisome decline in the number of public companies in the United States and the accompanying growth in the private market: “Since 2000, the private equity-backed company count climbed from about 2,000 U.S. companies to more than 11,500, a 475% increase. Over the same period, the count of publicly-listed U.S. businesses on U.S. exchanges declined from roughly 7,000 to 4,500, shrinking 36%.” The white paper, based on a survey of issuers to determine the“pain points” of being publicly traded, proposed myriad ways of relieving the burdens of being public, including the two-pronged recommendation of (1) standardizing guidelines for the quarterly press release to enable it to replace the 10-Q and (2) offering companies the option, where not detrimental to investors, to report semi-annually instead of quarterly. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce published a white paper in June 2025 called“Unlocking America's Capital Markets” that contained the same recommendation.

One organization has stated its intention to take action on the issue: The Long Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), a national exchange based in San Francisco, announced about a week before the President's social media post that it plans to formally petition the SEC to allow companies to report semi-annually rather than quarterly. The founding mission of the LTSE, which opened for trading in 2020, is to combat short-termism in the capital markets by enabling companies to focus on their long-term strategy and performance and engage with a broad-based group of stakeholders who are also focused on the long term. While a common objection to eliminating quarterly reporting is that it may increase market volatility, long-term market participants argue that viewing events over a longer time period tends to have the opposite effect, smoothing out bumps that would have an outsized impact if analyzed only within a short timeframe.

Looking Ahead

For a reform that has been suggested many times, the current moment seems more favorable than ever. The Trump Administration is pursuing deregulation broadly across the federal government, and the SEC can build on the information gathered in its 2019 roundtable and public comment period to pursue significant reform in this area. The SEC has the authority to change the reporting requirement with a majority vote of the Commission, which currently has a majority of Republican appointees. A reform of this nature would likely take the SEC six to twelve months to implement through the administrative process of notice-and-comment rulemaking, although that timing could be accelerated.

Making quarterly reporting optional would not be a magic bullet to stop the decline in the number of U.S. public companies, nor would it eliminate short-termism from the market. However, it would ease the regulatory burden that discourages companies from going and remaining public. And if the change in periodic reporting were to result in (1) a meaningful decrease in companies providing quarterly or semi-annual EPS guidance, and (2) quarterly earnings calls also moving to a six-month schedule, the market's focus on short-termism likely would be significantly reduced. Companies, offered some relief from the relentless quarterly timetable of reporting, earnings calls, and guidance, would have more leeway to focus on their substantive, longer-term priorities; and the significance of EPS guidance would diminish within the larger strategic context in which it is provided. Indeed, if semi-annual earnings calls were timed to occur simultaneously with the release of companies' semi-annual and Form 10-K periodic filings, the market might be satisfied with the flow of information and more companies might be able to forgo quarterly guidance altogether.

The EU and UK experience shows that reducing the reporting frequency to semi-annual is likely to have little to no effect on corporate investment decisions or market volatility and result in no meaningful loss of transparency, particularly if companies continue to produce quarterly press releases (whether voluntarily or in response to a scaled-down reporting requirement) that provide information useful to investors. In the interest of promoting public markets-the engine of American economic growth-moving from quarterly to semi-annual reporting would be a positive step.

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