 |  Periodic editorials concerning everything from the very worst industry—from an annual report standpoint, that is—to what's wrong with the Fourth Estate. Reporters who can't hit an accuracy with a cannon. |
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| Periodic editorials concerning everything from the very worst industry—from an annual report standpoint, that is—to what's wrong with the Fourth Estate. Reporters who can't hit an accuracy with a cannon. |
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Monitoring the world's annuals is a lonely job.
It's a thankless task, monitoring the world's annual reports to shareholders of publicly held companies—in this, our 19th year at this esoteric stand. But, then again, it's not. On balance—that is, for the most part—it can be terribly rewarding. I say this as my monthly Newsletter on Annual Reports, with issue No. 217 for September in the mail, breaks ground on yet another year. If you think about it, monitoring annuals isn't inherently exciting. It involves laboriously, carefully, logging in a report in various databases. First, receipt of a report is acknowledged in our master list. Among other things, it's necessary to check to ensure we have a company's correct current address. (Also, a company's official name—the one the auditors use to sign off on the financials—is the one we use for our data base. So IBM remains, officially, International Business Machines Corporation.) Then I log in its theme, if any. (So far this year, 71.1 percent of reports—seven of 10—offer up a theme, though only two of three [66.7 percent] are sufficiently supported, to my way of thinking.) A report then is carefully evaluated in three dozen areas, from extent of financial disclosure, to complete biographical data on officers and directors, to presence of a mission statement, glossary of terms and editorial material that will qualify as a special section—an in-depth interview with top management, say. (Meanwhile, the phone is ringing; or, more likely, I'm being signaled there's new email coming in. Or delivery men and women are pounding loudly on my office door to show their masculinity—the former, at least.) Finally, I analyze text to determine its readability. Again, everything is computerized—to remove, as much as possible, the human element from judging, and to insure consistency during the 12-15-month process. One area in which I'm definitely actively involved, computer or no, concerns my copyrighted Category 14—CEO participation in the report and indicating what the company's all about and where he or she sees it headed. Not to forget that (1) those reports so analyzed have to be written up for my monthly newsletter and (2) at the same time, www.sidcato.com gets updated several times weekly. How can one be sure an evaluation at one sitting is completely accurate and fair? One (I!) can't. So I look at annuals on several different occasions. One report surprised me with what appeared to be its 124-point score. On revisiting it, it became clear I had hit a wrong key in my original input. Its score ended up a more-likely mid-115s. Also, I tell audiences it's not fair for me to evaluate a report on a sunny day, or after I've won at tennis (which I used to play a lot). Or view a document negatively after getting soaked by a sudden spring rain, or after locking myself out of my car. It's a thankless task. But somebody's got to do it. As we have for the last 18 years.
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