Don’t Kill Quarterlies. Fix Them

Like flossing your teeth every night or changing your oil every 3,000 miles, quarterly reporting is a grind. It can absolutely feel like an expensive and tedious distraction for senior management teams. Those hours of preparation and review each quarter could certainly be spent improving the business. 

But just as flossing lets you keep your teeth and fresh oil lets you keep your engine, quarterly reporting lets you keep the trust of the investing public. That established, proven cadence is part of the deal. It’s how you make sure the market sees (and prices) the value you’re building. 

The answer isn’t to kill quarterlies. It’s to modernize them. 

I’ve spent more than two decades in investor relations helping companies communicate with institutional and retail investors. I get why some want to switch to reporting just twice a year. Quarterlies are labor-intensive, costly, and often blamed for short-term thinking. The fix, though, isn’t less disclosure. It’s better disclosure.

Why Quarterly Reporting Still Matters

More than ever, companies must also recognize the real risk of stock manipulation through misinformation. The tools and tricks of this trade have never been more advanced, from social media bot campaigns to AI “short attacks” to C-suite deepfakes. Six months between reporting is simply inviting a dramatic increase in these kinds of abuses, victimizing companies and investors in the process.  

Quarterly reports are not mundane exercises in futility; they’re the touchpoints that shape sentiment and capital allocation. In markets fueled by algos, high-frequency traders and a 24/7 media cycle, timely updates reduce speculation and keep things orderly.  Additional arguments include:

Leveling the playing field. Regular updates limit information gaps between institutions, retail holders, and insiders. Long silences invite selective disclosure and erode trust.

Keeping capital honest. A quarterly rhythm forces teams to show their work and surface issues early before they become problems.

Building the record. Analysts need frequent, useful data to model trends and risk. Without it, even strong public brands get pushed around by rumor.

Calming the tape. It’s uncertainty, not frequency, that spikes volatility. Consistent, credible updates help expectations reset smoothly.

The Real Issue Isn’t Frequency

Short-termism is real, but quarterly reporting isn’t the villain. The “beat/miss” obsession is. If every conversation is about how a company beat or miss analysts’ expectations, you crowd out strategy, execution, and long-term value creation.

A Practical Fix

Don’t ditch the framework. Improve it. 

1. Stop the quarterly EPS guidance. Most short-term pressure comes from guidance, not reporting. Shift to forward-looking commentary on fundamentals, capital priorities, and milestones.
2. Tier the compliance load. Lighten quarterly requirements for smaller issuers while keeping more comprehensive reporting mandates  for large-caps and fast-moving sectors.
3. Broaden the story. Use the quarter to report progress on strategy such as product roadmaps, customer sentiment or key operating metrics so it’s a value-creation update, and not just a scoreboard.
4. Modernize the delivery. Move to structured data, interactive dashboards, and searchable metrics on your IR website to cut repetition and make what matters easier to find.

Fix the Framework…Don’t Throw it Away

Eliminating quarterly reporting would widen information gaps, increase volatility around earnings, and weaken the discipline public markets demand. It would also reduce overall confidence in US markets and their reporting systems, which for all their faults, are viewed as the gold standard.  

The system can be better, absolutely. But the cure isn’t fewer reports; it’s smarter ones.

Across many different sectors, from tech to consumer to healthcare, the strongest investor relationships I’ve seen are built on regular, candid, forward-looking communication. Quarterly reporting, refined and rebalanced, is still one of the best tools we have for that.

Transparency and predictability are the currency of confidence. Weakening disclosure moves us the wrong way. Let’s modernize quarterly reporting—not abandon it.