President Trump asks SEC to study abolishing quarterly earnings reports
money.cnn.com
money.cnn.com
Why not go the other way? Allow companies to publish financial statements monthly (with a rolling close) plus annually one month after the annual close. And as for the various material statements and representations that go along with them, let various press releases, tweets etc account for them, plus the annual formal statement (shareholder letter).
IIRC Cicso famously had a "three day close" closing their books three days into the new month. Some reasonable software investment should permit many companies to do a rolling close. Those who make that investment would be permitted to stop doing quarterlies.
This is a case where a more frequent cadence of lower amplitude might allow a better long term view!
> This is a case where a more frequent cadence of lower amplitude might allow a better long term view!
Essentially, the quarterly cadence makes each release a big deal. More frequent releases may have slightly more volatility encouraging investors to look for longer trends.
Ideally you'd have weekly closes but except for large companies that would offer all sorts of swings due to trivia like expense reports or other transients. But GAAP in theory would allow a large modern corporation to close every day. The whole point of accrual is to damp out this nonsense.
Yet flat out abolishing them seems a terrible price to pay in terms of transparency. Perhaps a middle ground, based on the size of the company in terms of revenue? Or some other (less onerous, I guess) means of reporting -- in quantifiable terms -- the health of a business each quarter?