How and where do companies publish financial reports?

Question

AFAIK, Wall-street companies should publish their financial reports and make them publicly available so that everyone can make an educated investment decision. That might be a silly question but first of all : Is this true? Secondly, and more importantly, WHERE are those news being published first? eg. Let's say that I'm a NASDAQ company (let's say Coca-Cola) and I want to make my financial report publicly available. Where and how do i go about that? :)

Answer 1

Yes it is true. The US based companies have to meet the requirements placed on them by the US government. The agency with all these reports is the Security and Exchange Commission.

They run the EDGAR system to hold all those required reports

The SEC’s EDGAR database provides free public access to corporate information, allowing you to quickly research a company’s financial information and operations by reviewing registration statements, prospectuses and periodic reports filed on Forms 10-K and 10-Q. You also can find information about recent corporate events reported on Form 8-K but that a company does not have to disclose to investors.

EDGAR also provides access to comment and response letters relating to disclosure filings made after August 1, 2004, and reviewed by either the Division of Corporation Finance or the Division of Investment Management. On May 22, 2006, the staffs of the Divisions of Corporation Finance and Investment Management began to use the EDGAR system to issue notifications of effectiveness for Securities Act registration statements and post-effective amendments, other than those that become effective automatically by law. These notifications will be posted to the EDGAR system the morning after a filing is determined to be effective.

As pointed out by Grade 'Eh' Bacon: Other countries may require different types of information to be reported to the public, in particular, financial statements. To find the financial statements released for a particular company, you can go to the appropriate stock exchange, or often simply the company's corporate website.