By Kenneth Corbin

When the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed allowing public companies to issue earnings reports twice a year instead of the current quarterly schedule, the agency billed it as one step forward in its broader objective of creating greater regulatory flexibility and reducing administrative burdens. Investors and other public commenters who have responded to the rule disagree.

The SEC collected comments on its semiannual reporting proposal through Monday, but as of midday Wednesday only a couple of responses submitted that day were publicly available. Industry trade groups and other large organizations often wait to submit their comments on rule proposals until the last day. That means that many substantive comments are likely still missing from the record, but the submissions the SEC has posted demonstrate strong opposition to the proposal, according to an analysis by Tzachi Zach, a professor of accounting and management information systems at Ohio State University.

Zach has created an artificial-intelligence-powered tracking website analyzing the comments the SEC has posted and evaluating their sentiment. As of midday Wednesday, the tracker had looked through 8,080 original comments, finding that 7,994, or 99%, opposed the semiannual reporting proposal. The database counts an additional 59,972 comments that resemble some kind of form letter, which are generally submitted through a coordinated campaign supporting or opposing a rule. Every one of those opposed the rule, and the SEC's comment page showed several thousand more that hadn't been evaluated by Zach's database, though he expects those will express more of the same negative sentiment about the proposal. "We haven't seen a form letter that's not opposed," he says.

One of the campaigns was organized by the nonprofit Wall Street reform group Better Markets, which has called the SEC's proposal to allow companies to cease reporting quarterly results a "slap in the face to investors." The investing website Motley Fool has staged its own campaign to "save the 10-Q." Companies could choose to continue reporting on a quarterly schedule under the proposal, raising the potential for businesses that compete in the same industry to report with different frequencies.

The SEC didn't immediately respond to questions about how many responses it has received but hasn't yet published and about the strong opposition most of the comments that have been published appear to express.

Many of the comments criticizing the proposal argue that it would further exacerbate the information disparity between retail investors and their institutional counterparts, who have deep resources and connections to help them track a public company's activities without having to rely on quarterly filings.

"Quarterly reports are the single most important leveling mechanism between retail and institutional investors in U.S. equity markets," the Reddit group WallStreetBets wrote in its comment letter. "Institutional investors have expert networks, channel checks, alternative data, satellite imagery of retailer parking lots, credit card panel data, and direct management access through conferences and one-on-one meetings that cost more than most of our portfolios. We have the 10-Q."

In a study published last month, the CFA Institute found that 62% of investors said they oppose replacing quarterly reporting with a semiannual schedule, and about 85% of investors said they have concerns about differing reporting schedules muddying comparisons between companies.

The proposal does have some notable supporters. The American Bankers Association says it favors allowing banks to report less frequently because "the quarterly reporting process imposes recurring costs and demands substantial management attention, while banks already provide extensive information to investors through regulatory reporting, earnings communications, and other market-facing disclosures."

Neil Hansen, the chief financial officer at Exxon Mobil, wrote that his company supports the effort for its potential to reduce complexity, inefficiency, and the regulatory burden that issuers face. Modern investors, he argued, have access to a galaxy of corporate information such as nonquarterly disclosures, webcasts, and investor presentations that wasn't available when the quarterly reporting requirement took effect in 1970.

Many trade groups representing segments of the financial services sector have come out in opposition to the proposal, though their comment letters generally laud the SEC's stated commitment to easing regulatory and compliance burdens, such as through streamlining reporting requirements.

The Investment Adviser Association warned that the proposal could "worsen information asymmetry and disadvantage smaller and midsized investment advisors and their clients." The Investment Company Institute, which represents fund companies, noted that while its members' views on the issue are "nuanced and somewhat mixed," the group's view is that it would be open to modifying 10-Q reporting requirements to make the process less burdensome, but it opposes any effort to abandon the quarterly schedule. The Wall Street group Sifma also asked the SEC not to move forward with the proposal.

Apart from the questions of access to information about public companies, supporters of the proposal have suggested that a less frequent reporting schedule could ease near-term pressure on companies and support a move toward more ambitious but slow-moving strategic initiatives such as research and development that could foster innovation and promote a longer-term view of the business.

Zach, the Ohio State professor, is skeptical about that point. He argues that the researchers who have studied the relationship between reporting requirements and short-versus.-long-term investment have come up empty.

"The evidence is not there," he says. "I think the true pressures for short-termism are not necessarily the frequency of reporting, but other things relating to governance, compensation structures. [Those] are related to quarterly reporting, but I don't think short-termism is created by quarterly reporting."

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July 08, 2026 16:37 ET (20:37 GMT)