我们为何应该避免取消季报制度？

“我们的市场渴求反映公司的业绩和重要活动的优质而及时的信息。我们深知这些信息对完善公平的资本市场至关重要。但我们也知道公司和投资者有进行长期规划的需要。我们的规则应该反映这些现实。”

这是美国证券与交易委员会（Securities and Exchange Commission）的主席杰伊·克莱顿在证交会应要求回应美国财报和季报体系时开场说的话。总统唐纳德·特朗普要求他们研究这个已经有数十年历史的体系。在此之前，他发推文称一位顶尖企业的管理者建议美国“停止季度报告，转而采用半年报告”，从而“让生意变得更好”。

克莱顿主席有一件事肯定没说错：市场渴求优质而及时的信息。然而，我们很难理解，信息发布频率降低后如何才能满足这种渴求。

看不清的更多风险

私营公司在公开市场上占了一个很大的便宜：它们有了估值的参照点。私营公司在向投资者报告时也会采用上市公司的估值体系，用于在私募股权的投资者之间进行交易。如果说，更多的信息可以让公开市场更有效率地引导资金流向效果最好的地方，同样的信息也会让私募股权市场运转良好。

讽刺的是，私募市场需要公开市场——虽然它们与此同时也在吸引公司远离上市。取消上市公司的季报制度，让它们更像私营公司，是一种向下竞争，恐怕对双方都没有好处。

季度财报vs长期财报

私营公司不做季度财报的自由被过分夸大了。私营公司的管理者常常把这种解脱看作是持有私募股权的一项额外好处，然而私营公司往往会在内部发布季度财报。更可能的是，他们不会真正错过季度财报的实质：给华尔街的分析师提供公正的业绩指引。

季度财报有着导致短线思维的坏名声。Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz律师所的超级律师马丁·利普顿等杰出人士就呼吁取消季度财报，鼓励长线思维。在底特律三大汽车巨头担任过高管的汽车业传奇人物鲍勃·鲁茨在采访时表示希望季度财报、业绩指引和分析师报告能够全部消失。希拉里·克林顿在2016年美国总统竞选时抨击了“季度资本主义”。而特斯拉（Tesla）的首席执行官埃隆·马斯克最近对员工表示，季度财报的周期给“特斯拉带来了巨大压力”，可能会分散公司对长期规划的关注。不过季度财报真的是万恶之源吗？

导致汇报过程令人筋疲力尽的，是美国公司对华尔街复杂而永不停歇的业绩指引。而季度财报也与长期规划毫无必要地交织在了一起。美国证交会绝对没有要求公司提供业绩指引，是公司自己做出的选择。

公司可以立刻取消业绩指引，从而简化自己的报告。商界有人支持这一想法。在Business Roundtable的支持下，杰米·戴蒙和沃伦·巴菲特在《华尔街日报》（Wall Street Journal）的专栏探讨了抛弃季度业绩指引，而不是季度财报的做法。

季度财报的负担何时变得如此沉重？

1970年起，美国证交会开始要求提供季度财报，由于证券交易所上市的要求，当时许多公司已经在这么做了。那时还没有这么多电子表格来帮助梳理各项事务，公司只要在当季结束后45天内提交一份10-Q季报即可。即使如今的汇报期减少了5天（对大公司而言），季度财报变得如此繁重也是一件难以置信的事情。如今的软件和数据处理能力比1970年首席财务官能够利用的要先进得太多。

公司指出，新增的季度和年度信息披露是额外的负担，但这些也不是一夜之间增加的。随着公司开始参与越来越复杂的商业合并、衍生交易、股权薪酬计划和纳税筹划，才渐渐有了这些要求。新的会计和信息披露要求是逐渐增加的，而不是突然出现的。

隐瞒信息对任何人都没有好处

按照主席克莱顿的说法，企业在越来越复杂的交易中不断演化，市场的参与者需要知道信息，确保它们“运转良好而且公平”。限制财报频率，向投资者隐瞒信息并不会减少工作的复杂程度，相反，还会引发误解和波动，提高资本成本。积存超过三个月的内部信息会给合规和法务部门带来更大的监督窗口，伴随而来的还有风险。这一切都无益于公开市场。

与其限制盈余信息，证交会应该要求公司在发布财报时提交季度报告，同时维持现有的报告提交截止期。这会让投资者更全面地掌握公司的业绩和财务状况。许多公司都在这么做，报告的框架中已经包含了这种灵活性。

美国的企业家足够聪明。他们可以提出开创性的科学发现，设计出色的物流配送——但却还不能在强大工具的帮助下想出符合报告要求的有效方案。取消报告要求不是解决办法，尤其是它所引发的黑暗可能会导致资本成本的提高。公司应当谨慎对待它们的愿望——效仿私营公司恐怕不会带来它们希望的后果。（财富中文网）

作者杰克·切谢尔斯基是位于马里兰州巴尔的摩的R.G. Associates, Inc.公司的会计分析师和投资组合经理。

译者：严匡正

“Our markets thirst for high-quality, timely information regarding company performance and material corporate events. We recognize the importance of this information to well-functioning and fair capital markets. We also recognize the need for companies and investors to plan for the long term. Our rules should reflect these realities.”

Those are the remarks of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton at the kickoff for the Commission’s request for comment on the United States system for earnings releases and quarterly reports. The SEC was asked to study the decades-old system by President Donald Trump, after tweeting that a top business leader suggested that the U.S. should “stop quarterly earnings and go to a six-month system” to “make business (jobs) even better.”

Chairman Clayton surely has one thing right: markets thirst for high-quality, timely information. Yet it’s difficult to see how moving to less-frequent information slakes that thirst.

More at Stake than Meets the Eye

Private companies get a free ride from the public markets in a very important regard: they provide a reference point for valuations. Public company valuations are used in private company reporting to investors, and for exchanges of whole companies among private equity players. If more information makes public markets more effective at letting capital go to where it’s best served, the same information keeps private equity markets robust as well.

Ironically, the private markets need the public markets – while they simultaneously attract companies away from public listings. Eliminating public company quarterly reporting to make them more like private markets is a race to the bottom, and it may weaken both.

Quarterly Reporting vs. the Long Term

Private companies’ freedom from quarterly reporting is oversold. Managers of private companies often revel over their liberation as a perk of private equity ownership, yet private companies often internally report quarterly earnings. More likely, what they really don’t miss about quarterly reporting: doling out fair and equal guidance to Wall Street analysts.

Quarterly reporting gets a bad rap for causing short-term thinking. Luminaries such as super-lawyer Martin Lipton of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz have called for scrapping quarterly reporting to encourage long-term thinking. Automotive legend Bob Lutz, an executive at all three of Detroit’s Big Three, told an interviewer he wishes it would all go away — the quarterly earnings, the guidance, analyst reports, all of it. Hillary Clinton trashed “quarterly capitalism” during her 2016 presidential campaign. And Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently told employees the quarterly earnings cycle puts “enormous pressure on Tesla” and may distract the company from the long-term picture. But is quarterly reporting really the root of all evil?

It’s Corporate America’s intricate, non-stop guidance dance with Wall Street that makes the entire reporting process exhausting, and the quarterly reporting issue becomes conflated with the long-term issue needlessly. There is absolutely no SEC requirement to provide earnings guidance; companies make that choice.

Companies can immediately simplify their reporting by forgoing the election to provide earnings guidance. There is support in the business community for that idea. With the backing of the Business Roundtable, Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed for abandoning quarterly earnings guidance – but not quarterly earnings reporting.

When Did Quarterly Reporting Become Burdensome?

The SEC mandated quarterly reporting in 1970, when many companies had already elected to do so because of exchange listing requirements. Without so much as electronic spreadsheets to help with the chore, companies were able to generate a 10-Q in 45 days after the quarter’s close. Even with a reporting window that’s now five days shorter (for large companies), it’s incredible that quarterly reporting has become so onerous. Today’s software and data processing capabilities are far superior to what CFOs were able to muster in 1970.

Companies point to added quarterly and annual disclosures as an added burden, but that information wasn’t added overnight. It arrived in increments, as companies engaged in increasingly complex business combinations, derivatives transactions, equity compensation plans, and tax strategies. New accounting and disclosure requirements arrived incrementally, not suddenly.

Obscuring Information Benefits No One

Business has evolved through increasingly complex transactions, and market participants need information about them to be “well-functioning and fair,” in the words of Chairman Clayton. Obscuring information from investor view by limiting reporting frequency does not reduce complexity; instead, it fosters misinformation and volatility, and can raise the cost of capital. Inside information, staying inside longer than three months, creates a larger window for compliance and legal departments to police, with attendant risks. None of this benefits the public markets.

Instead of working to limit earnings information, the SEC should call for companies to file their quarterly reports when they release their earnings, while keeping the same reporting deadlines. That would give investors information about a company’s performance and financial condition in a comprehensive package. Many companies do this, and the flexibility is already built into the reporting framework.

Our country’s entrepreneurs are smart enough to make groundbreaking scientific discoveries or devise brilliant delivery logistics — yet can’t figure out cost-effective solutions for dealing with reporting requirements despite powerful tools to help them. Removing reporting requirements is not the answer, especially if the darkness it creates makes for higher costs of capital. Companies should be careful of that they wish for — emulating private companies might not provide the result they want.

Jack T. Ciesielski is an accounting analyst and portfolio manager at R.G. Associates, Inc. in Baltimore, Maryland.