Should quarterly reports be changed to semi-annually ?Interesting article on Breitbart poses the question. Should quarterly reports be changed to semi-annually ? Critics of quarterly reporting say they encourage companies to excessively focus on short-term results rather than the long-term performance of public companies. Putting together quarterly reports is also a huge cost for public companies, requiring resources to be directed at reporting rather than producing goods and services for the market.
The influential law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz put out a memo to clients two years ago advocating for an end to quarterly reporting. The memo pointed to reform efforts in the U.K. to end quarterly reporting requirements. Regulators there had found that “rigid quarterly reporting requirements can promote an excessively short-term focus by companies, investors and market intermediaries and impose unnecessary regulatory burdens on companies, without providing useful or meaningful information for investors.”