Briefing – Earnings in 2026: Keeping your story consistent under market scrutiny

Amid a growing debate over the future of quarterly reporting, experts are weighing what a slower cadence of disclosure could mean As policymakers and corporate leaders debate the future of quarterly financial reporting in the US, a significant shift looms over how public companies communicate with investors and how they are held accountable. Beginning in 1970, the US has required its public companies to report its earnings every three months. Any previous attempts to cut this back has been met with opposition from shareholders and industry groups who argue that the changes could threaten transparency and market volatility. This time…

‘Investors, analysts – everyone in financial markets – is consulting a vast amount of increasing data sources to inform their investment decisions,’ said Laurie Havelock, IR Impact editor, kicking off the recent briefing that brought together Jesse Rose, head of IR at Reddit, Dave Bezanson, vice president of IR and pensions at EMERA and Christopher Napolitano, account executive at AlphaSense, the event partner. While data opens up a world of insights, Havelock pointed to the added pressure it brings when IROs must distil everything that is out there into something they can deliver to the board. This, said Napolitano, is…

Earlier this year, Tractor Supply Company (TSC)’s Mary Winn Pilkington celebrated her 100th earnings call – with balloons, cake and the typical quarterly stress to match. ‘In IR you touch on everything – that’s probably part of the reason I have stayed in investor relations for 25 years,’ she says. ‘Every day is different and you get to work with the smartest people inside the company. ‘You’re working with people that are on the board or the management team, you’re working with high potential individuals that have been given strategic projects to work on,’ she adds. ‘Then, outside of the…

As data continues to flood the market, IROs are finding it both challenging and time-consuming to gauge market perceptions of their companies. Increasingly, IROs are looking to their data platform providers to help them collect all the available, granular insight from brokers in one place, where it can be sorted, analyzed and better understood. But how can that data be passed through into the earnings process overall and be used to improve the impact of a company’s latest figures on various stakeholder audiences?