Corporate & Securities Law

Survey Results: Earnings Guidance

By dave

Survey Results: Earnings Guidance

Broc and I were at the National Investor Relations Institute Annual Conference in San Diego last week, and among the perennial topics for that group are the issues of how often companies should provide earnings guidance and whether companies should provide guidance at all. Here are the results of our recent survey on these topics:

1. Does your company:

- Provide monthly earnings guidance – 0.0%
- Provide quarterly earnings guidance – 18.3%
- Provide annual earnings guidance – 28.2%
- Provide quarterly and annual earnings guidance – 19.7%
- Provide earnings guidance selectively – 5.6%
- Not provide earnings guidance at all – 28.2%

2. If your company provides earnings guidance, have you considered (within the last 2 years):

- Reducing the frequency with which guidance is provided – 54.3%
- Increasing the frequency with which guidance is provided – 5.7%
- Discontinuing the practice of providing earnings guidance – 40.0%

3. If your company provides earnings guidance, have you considered (within the last 2 years):

- Increasing the detail of the guidance provided – 15.2%
- Decreasing the detail of the guidance provided – 37.0%
- Making no change to the detail of the guidance provided – 47.8%

4. If your company has discontinued earnings guidance, were the results:

- No changes can be attributed to discontinuing guidance – 43.7%
- Increased stock price volatility – 6.3%
- Reduction in analyst coverage – 6.3%
- Shift away from a short-term, quarter-to-quarter focus – 18.7%
- It is difficult to judge the impact of discontinuing guidance - 25.0%

New Survey: Audit Committees and Earnings Releases

We last conducted a survey on audit committees and earnings releases in August 2005 (here are those results). Practices appear to have changed since then; to determine the extent of change, we have repeated many of that survey’s questions in our new quick survey on "Audit Committees and Earnings Releases." Please take a moment to answer the five survey questions.

The Latest Compensation Disclosures: A Proxy Season Post-Mortem

Join me, Mark Borges and Ron Mueller tomorrow for this CompensationStandards.com webcast - "The Latest Compensation Disclosures: A Proxy Season Post-Mortem" - to hear all the latest about the proxy disclosures filed with the SEC over the past few months. Then, a week later, catch the companion webcast: "The Consultants Speak: How the Latest Compensation Disclosures Impacted Practices."

- Dave Lynn

Full post as published by The Corporate Counsel.net Blog on June 16, 2008 (boomark / email).