“我們的市場渴求反映公司的業績和重要活動的優質而及時的信息。我們深知這些信息對完善公平的資本市場至關重要。但我們也知道公司和投資者有進行長期規劃的需要。我們的規則應該反映這些現實。”

這是美國證券與交易委員會（Securities and Exchange Commission）的主席杰伊·克萊頓在證交會應要求回應美國財報和季報體系時開場說的話。總統唐納德·特朗普要求他們研究這個已經有數十年歷史的體系。在此之前，他發推文稱一位頂尖企業的管理者建議美國“停止季度報告，轉而采用半年報告”，從而“讓生意變得更好”。

克萊頓主席有一件事肯定沒說錯：市場渴求優質而及時的信息。然而，我們很難理解，信息發布頻率降低后如何才能滿足這種渴求。

看不清的更多風險

私營公司在公開市場上占了一個很大的便宜：它們有了估值的參照點。私營公司在向投資者報告時也會采用上市公司的估值體系，用于在私募股權的投資者之間進行交易。如果說，更多的信息可以讓公開市場更有效率地引導資金流向效果最好的地方，同樣的信息也會讓私募股權市場運轉良好。

諷刺的是，私募市場需要公開市場——雖然它們與此同時也在吸引公司遠離上市。取消上市公司的季報制度，讓它們更像私營公司，是一種向下競爭，恐怕對雙方都沒有好處。

季度財報vs長期財報

私營公司不做季度財報的自由被過分夸大了。私營公司的管理者常常把這種解脫看作是持有私募股權的一項額外好處，然而私營公司往往會在內部發布季度財報。更可能的是，他們不會真正錯過季度財報的實質：給華爾街的分析師提供公正的業績指引。

季度財報有著導致短線思維的壞名聲。Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz律師所的超級律師馬丁·利普頓等杰出人士就呼吁取消季度財報，鼓勵長線思維。在底特律三大汽車巨頭擔任過高管的汽車業傳奇人物鮑勃·魯茨在采訪時表示希望季度財報、業績指引和分析師報告能夠全部消失。希拉里·克林頓在2016年美國總統競選時抨擊了“季度資本主義”。而特斯拉（Tesla）的首席執行官埃隆·馬斯克最近對員工表示，季度財報的周期給“特斯拉帶來了巨大壓力”，可能會分散公司對長期規劃的關注。不過季度財報真的是萬惡之源嗎？

導致匯報過程令人筋疲力盡的，是美國公司對華爾街復雜而永不停歇的業績指引。而季度財報也與長期規劃毫無必要地交織在了一起。美國證交會絕對沒有要求公司提供業績指引，是公司自己做出的選擇。

公司可以立刻取消業績指引，從而簡化自己的報告。商界有人支持這一想法。在Business Roundtable的支持下，杰米·戴蒙和沃倫·巴菲特在《華爾街日報》（Wall Street Journal）的專欄探討了拋棄季度業績指引，而不是季度財報的做法。

季度財報的負擔何時變得如此沉重？

1970年起，美國證交會開始要求提供季度財報，由于證券交易所上市的要求，當時許多公司已經在這么做了。那時還沒有這么多電子表格來幫助梳理各項事務，公司只要在當季結束后45天內提交一份10-Q季報即可。即使如今的匯報期減少了5天（對大公司而言），季度財報變得如此繁重也是一件難以置信的事情。如今的軟件和數據處理能力比1970年首席財務官能夠利用的要先進得太多。

公司指出，新增的季度和年度信息披露是額外的負擔，但這些也不是一夜之間增加的。隨著公司開始參與越來越復雜的商業合并、衍生交易、股權薪酬計劃和納稅籌劃，才漸漸有了這些要求。新的會計和信息披露要求是逐漸增加的，而不是突然出現的。

隱瞞信息對任何人都沒有好處

按照主席克萊頓的說法，企業在越來越復雜的交易中不斷演化，市場的參與者需要知道信息，確保它們“運轉良好而且公平”。限制財報頻率，向投資者隱瞞信息并不會減少工作的復雜程度，相反，還會引發誤解和波動，提高資本成本。積存超過三個月的內部信息會給合規和法務部門帶來更大的監督窗口，伴隨而來的還有風險。這一切都無益于公開市場。

與其限制盈余信息，證交會應該要求公司在發布財報時提交季度報告，同時維持現有的報告提交截止期。這會讓投資者更全面地掌握公司的業績和財務狀況。許多公司都在這么做，報告的框架中已經包含了這種靈活性。

美國的企業家足夠聰明。他們可以提出開創性的科學發現，設計出色的物流配送——但卻還不能在強大工具的幫助下想出符合報告要求的有效方案。取消報告要求不是解決辦法，尤其是它所引發的黑暗可能會導致資本成本的提高。公司應當謹慎對待它們的愿望——效仿私營公司恐怕不會帶來它們希望的后果。（財富中文網）

作者杰克·切謝爾斯基是位于馬里蘭州巴爾的摩的R.G. Associates, Inc.公司的會計分析師和投資組合經理。

譯者：嚴匡正

“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.