On September 15, 2025, President Trump proposed that public companies file financial reports semi-annually rather than quarterly (N. Andrews and C. Driebusch, “Trump Calls for Ending Quarterly Earnings Reports,” Wall Street Journal, Sep. 15, 2025, https://tinyurl.com/4ck5zh6y). In 2018, Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett opined that pressures to meet short-term earnings estimates led to fewer U.S. public company offerings over the past two decades (“Short-Termism is Harming the U.S. Economy,” Jun. 6, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/57mxujjj). The SEC requested comment on this matter at that time, but due to investor pushback, it ultimately decided not to make changes to current requirements. With the profile of the issue being raised, it is an opportune time to discuss the potential implications of business moving from quarterly to semi-annual reporting.
Considering the Pros and Cons
There are potential positives that could be realized by semi-annual reporting:
- Semi-annual reporting might encourage corporate management to focus on a longer-term perspective. The Business Roundtable supports less frequent earning disclosures, since earnings guidance too often leads to an unhealthy focus on short-term profits at the expense of long-term strategy, growth, and sustainability (https://tinyurl.com/8uh3u94r).
- Semi-annual reporting would better align the United States with UK and EU reporting standards.
- Hitting or missing financial analysts’ quarterly expectations often causes stocks to move greatly upward or downward. Semi-annual reporting might reduce volatility.
- Less frequent public reporting could lower audit fees.
But there are also negatives:
- Some believe that less frequent disclosures equate to less transparency because up to six months could pass before companies would have to report material, negative financial results.
- Less frequent oversight could cause unethical management to commit fraudulent activities.
- Fewer earnings reports could increase market volatility due to the lack of reported data.
- Even without quarterly reporting requirements, many US companies may still face significant short-term performance pressures.
What the research says.
A cursory review of the research on this question raises other issues to consider:
- Kang found that public company financial statement users rely on private communications channels to supplement publicly available financial reporting (“Financial Reporting Around Private Firms’ Securities Offerings,” Journal of Accounting Research, vol. 63, no. 2, pp.857–901, 2025). This implies that less frequent financial reporting would lead users to seek out other sources of information.
- Brannon and Jennings found that frequent earnings reporting benefits knowledgeable investors to the detriment of less sophisticated investors due to noisier data (“Too Much Information?” Regulation, vol. 43, p.20, 2020). “Isolated events that significantly affect profits in one quarter may cause investors to overreact,” creating manipulated or short-sighted changes that lower long-term profits in order to smooth out such fluctuations.
- Nallareddy, Pozen, and Rajgopal found that when the United Kingdom changed public companies’ required public reporting frequency, it virtually did not impact companies’ internal investment decisions (“Consequences of More Frequent Reporting: The UK Experience,” Journal of Law, Finance, and Accounting, vol. 6, no. 1, pp.51–88, 2021).
A Break with Tradition
Now that semiannual public company reporting is on the discussion agenda, thought leaders in financial management and accounting should ask themselves: What would occur if some companies continue to voluntarily publish quarterly results, and how might investors respond to different, incompatible reporting frequencies?
Changing current practice, which has been in place since 1970, would require SEC approval—traditionally been a lengthy, bureaucratic process. The SEC will reportedly “prioritize” Trump’s proposal (NPR, https://tinyurl.com/yvwd5th4), but any change will presumably still require much consultation and debate. As such, a formal rule change might not materialize anytime soon.
