New research from Yusuf J. Ugras, Ph.D., looking at the impact of financial reporting frequency provides insights for financial reporting regulators.   

New research from Yusuf Ugras, Ph.D., a faculty member at La Salle University’s School of Business looked at how reduction in financial reporting frequency by stock market listed companies could affect investors.   

Ugras’ research titled Quarterly vs. Semiannual Reporting: A Cross-Market Analysis of Earnings Announcement Reactions in the US and Europe, was published in the International Journal of Financial Studies. 

In the United States, financial reports have been required to be published on a quarterly basis since 1970, but this high reporting frequency is criticized for causing managerial myopia (too much focus on short-term financial results), earnings management, and heightened short-term volatility in the stock prices. 

“In September 2025, the debate over corporate financial reporting was thrust back into the policy spotlight by President Trump’s call for public companies to transition from quarterly to semi-annual reporting,” Ugras, an associate professor of accounting, said, adding that this prompted the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to announce reevaluating the frequency of reporting as a priority. “The aim of this research was to examine the value of increased financial reporting. The goal was to assess whether increased financial reporting enhances investor protection and transparency.”   

Ugras and his co-author looked at a dataset spanning nearly 20 years that included daily closing stock prices over the period in two regions: US based Dow Jones firms who publish quarterly reports and EU based STOXX 50 firms who publish their reports on a semi-annual basis.  

“The evidence presented unequivocally demonstrates that the cadence of financial reporting significantly conditions how capital markets process information and transmit risk, extending beyond a mere operational choice,” they wrote in the study.  

Ugras added that overall, US companies that reported on a quarterly basis showed larger immediate reactions to stock prices, but that the stock price normalized faster, with the results implying that the more frequent reporting speeds up the spread of information.   

He noted that there were differences between industries.  For firms operating in high-beta or information-intensive sectors, such as the information technology or real estate sectors, increased financial reporting is of greater value than those firms with low-beta industries, like the utilities or healthcare sectors.  

This research is valuable as the SEC looks at changing the frequency requirements of reporting, Ugras said.  The study suggests semiannual reporting not to be implemented across the board but only for firms above a given inclusion threshold or those meeting established governance and liquidity metrics. If SEC moves towards reducing financial reporting to be on a semi-annual basis across the board for all firms investors will lean more heavily on ad hoc filings and guidance between the semi-annual filings.  

“Advocating for a uniform or monolithic disclosure cadence across all market environments may not achieve an optimal outcome,” he said. “Instead, a more adaptive regulatory framework, one that allows for tailored disclosure guidance based on specific facts, could strike a more effective balance between market transparency and stability.”   

The research was co-authored by Mark Ritter.  

–Naomi Thomas