"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.” This will save money, and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies. Did you ever hear the statement that, “China has a 50 to 100 year view on management of a company, whereas we run our companies on a quarterly basis???” Not good!!!"
What do ya'll make of this? I can't see any reason for him to be supporting this unless he expects the market to crash and wants more lead time ahead of it.
Trump says company should only report earnings every 6 months
byu/jaymef ininvesting
Posted by jaymef
44 Comments
at least 10-15% swings on a repot week.
Why every six months why not yearly? I see no chance this happens.
I like the transparency of quarterly reporting however maybe change guidance.
I like it. It would take some time to get used too. Bi annually seems like a win win to me. Make these companies be a little more fwd looking than squeezing profit every 3 months.
Could be more lead time. Could be to have more volatility happen during earnings report (since they all insider trade in government)
they really should only report up quarters, when they report down quarters the stocks go down and thats not good for shareholders.
It’s not the worse idea he’s had. There’d be some tradeoffs, but he’s right that almost every public company thinks on a quarter long timeline.
So less transparency and keeps the public in the blind? Wow
This is already standard in Europe. For example, LVMH, Volkswagen, Airbus, Siemens, Shell Oil, etc… all report bi-annual earnings. Some do provide quarterly statements as a courtesy though with less formal snapshots of ongoing performance.
Doubling from 3 to 6 months is doubling, 2X seems like a huge jump. Why not start at 4 months?
If you ranked all of his ideas, this one would be no where near his dumbest. Idk if it is a *good idea* i guess it just depends on how much influence quarterly results have on executive leadership.
There are pros and cons.
The main support behind this idea is that quarterly reporting is not trivial for companies and prevents some from going public. Our public market is also a casino now and 6 month reporting would hopefully lessen this.
On the downside, this will reduce transparency for investors. Professional investors who meet with boards regularly will have more information than retail/individual investors.
Why would it matter? It’s not like fundamental are the strong point of wall st
Publish an earnings release quarterly but 10q required every 6 months.
I’m in accounting and have been advocate of this for years.
I like the idea of companies moving away from focusing on short-term profit at the expense of long-term health of the business, but in my experience working at publicly traded companies they plan internally by year and quarters are just for reporting. I don’t see this doing anything other than making earnings reports cause even higher volatility than they do already.
Wow might be the only good idea he’s had
Looks like someone is worried the economy might tank
I could see this being useful. Certainly businesses do a lot of non-productive things to hit various quarterly targets. Shifting the focus from quarterly to biannually could be a moderate positive. I think a more drastic change like say ever 2 years might help more. And of course companies are allowed to voluntarily release information between cycles.
OTOH that might be too long for investors so you get informal releases. So this seems like something that likely doesn’t do much of anything but it could help a smidge.
He just doesn’t want Q3 2025 reports to hit.
I find it rather strange that I am in support of just this shift. The fastest way to kill innovation is to have companies blinded by the quarterly street test.
I’d be ok with it. It would drive the hedge fund and consequently sell-side research community crazy though.
Everything he touches turns to shit, so no. Letting him change the finance sector is the last thing anyone should do. Keep the toddler away from the candy!
Instead of changing that how about change the laws requiring companies and CEOs to put profits above all else. Board and CEO can be sued if they don’t maximize profits / share holder value.
Modify those laws and requirements and execs will focus on long term value instead of short term profit maximization
I see it as a positive change. Would give senior leadership more time to focus on running the business, rather than managing short-term expectations.
UK already made this change back in 2014, although many companies still voluntarily report more frequently.
For swing traders, maybe a negative. Short term trading probably benefits from more frequent reporting.
Theres nothing magical about every 3 months, could easily be every 2 or every 4. Ive always thought trimester reporting every 4 months would be a bit better than quarterly. Takes out the cost of one periods reporting and is still frequent enough for timely updates. Six seems a long time to wait for updates and would make seasonal reporting interesting maybe, but who knows, could be good, could be bad. If you mismanage a 6 month period though going to be a long wait to get new news out there on results.
There’s going to be trade offs. Less transparency, but less pressure to paint a rosy picture every quarter.
I value more transparency, because insiders and big players will have even more advantage than retail investors.
If he knew good numbers were coming in, he’d propose bi-weekly reports.
Slowing the reporting could actually be a not so bad thing: it would at least incentivize more long term planning instead of scrambling every month.
Can’t have bad reports without reports.
Will it help with the Trump Epstein coverup?
So anything to stop the figures of the Trump economy being reported.
This, effectively, would not change anything….except perhaps yes there may be some cost savings to corporations….but we are also talking about a very large and presumably expensive shift in a system that has been operating (and built around) the quarterly system for a very long time.
Let’s leave the cost discussion to the side for a moment….this wouldn’t actually change anything.
The best ran companies have long-term strategic views, those strategic bets get broken down into shorter-term goals, which then translate into quarterly targets (not necessarily revenue based although for sure there are quarterly revenue / margin targets), which translates down to individual teams in the company.
Poorly ran companies select KPIs and metrics that are short-term focused and is important for individual bonuses in the moment…but lose track of the long-term goals and strategic bets. The best ran companies have KPIs and metrics for their managers that are directly tied to the longer-term bets…meaning your bonus this quarter is based on KPIs that support our long-term bets…not based on some short term revenue or margin needs.
Moving to a 6 month reporting structure would do nothing but make the market more volatile.
Rather than having a 3 month check-in to see if a company is on track to do what management said they are going to do…we now have 6 months for bad news to snowball and BAM! More volatility.
Or…and I can’t stress this enough and is more likely where Trump is coming from….you get more fraud and abuse from leadership with less scrutiny by investors.
I actually agree with this.
I work in public equities asset management and quarterly reporting is pretty damaging, it encourages ludicrous short termism.
The SEC will have to implement more risk based surveillance evaluations.
If anyone is an auditor or analyst, start looking at SEC for jobs
Not the right move.
The best move would be to make final statement auditors truly independent. Whereas now they are not, which is why companies get clean financial statements regularly.
Having worked in FS audit it gave me a terrible feeling. Felt very, dirty for lack of a better term.
The cost isn’t really that much to report quarterly for a well run company. It shows the company’s competence and that they’re mature enough to be a public company. Trump just likes minimal oversight for everything that he has a personal interest in or can benefit directly from.
Next he’ll want to make it never. His companies have shit finances, he doesn’t want them exposed.
The reporting requirements are the problem not the way stock/bonuses are structured are incentivized.
Sure Jan.
Ahhh…you mean the Trump who loves America SOOOO much and is such a swinging dick businessman that he wants to model our AMERICAN companies and the future of our NATION off Xi’s authoritarian CHYNA. Just another drop in the bucket of how inept he is with the business of our country.
Trying to hide economic downslope by just not reporting it.
I work closely with external reporting folks at my f100 company. I don’t think there would be any significant cost to companies to shift to biannual reports. If anything there would be savings from fewer billable hours to audit firms & probably g&a reduction from lower headcount.
I think the real loser would be the individual investor. Firms have models and lifelines to IR departments that will help them manage the longer waits between publications.
If the economy was doing gangbusters he’d push for weekly reporting
reduced transparency is never a good thing
Why the fuck is the President dictating the terms of financial reporting at all?