Less Reporting, More Board Risk?

Quarterly or Semiannual? A New Boardroom Decision Nears

The directors were gathering for what appeared to be a typical board meeting. But everyone knew that the agenda included something that wasn’t typical at all: A decades-long practice was about to change—or maybe not.

In the coming months, a pressing question will face directors of public companies across the United States: Should their firm become one of the first to switch to semiannual reporting? That’s because the quarterly filing requirement—in effect for public companies since 1970—is likely to change, as the SEC appears ready for a shift. If the new option is adopted after a public comment period, CEOs and CFOs, along with audit committees and general counsel, will need to make a recommendation to their boards: Should the company change its reporting cadence? Experts say it won’t be an easy call.  

The most salient risk: Investment analysts like more data, not less, and a recent study found that 72% of institutional respondents would reconsider their investments in a company that discontinued quarterly reports, while 47% would outright “reduce or avoid new positions in companies with limited transparency.” Many board directors may not give semiannual reporting the nod unless they have reasonable certainty that investors will stomach it. When the UK lifted its own similar requirements in 2014, less than 10% of companies stopped reporting quarterly within the first year.

But there’s a strong argument for adopting the change: Reporting semiannually would relieve many companies of the pressure to craft constant short-term narratives, says Jamen Graves, global leader of CEO and enterprise leadership development at Korn Ferry. The time required to prepare those reports might be better spent on long-term business goals rather than narrative building. Graves notes further that focusing on quarterly results is “not how you run a company—it’s how you engage a broader range of stakeholders on a narrative.” He adds, “I think ultimately boards will be pleased to not have that pressure and that kind of visibility.” Absent the need to spin transient earnings information, Graves believes, investors will see more accurate projections. As a result, he says, “we won’t have as much of a whiplash effect with different shareholders” which could make possible “a higher-integrity conversation.”

A move to semiannual reporting could attract the ire of activist investors, who typically are hungry for frequent financials, says Peter McDermott, senior client partner and head of the Corporate Affairs Practice at Korn Ferry. “If you’re not transparent externally, it could prompt behavior from activists,” he says. And this may be the wrong time to draw their attention: Activist activity has been on the rise, with 2025 seeing 297 activist campaigns worldwide—a record number—with 163 in the United States alone, according to a Lazard study. And in just the first half of 2025, activists acquired 112 board seats of the 216 directorships they sought—a success rate slightly above 50%. If a company elects to adopt semiannual reporting, keeping up good investor relations will be key, McDermott says, since that’s the avenue through which analysts are getting data. “More firms will need strong investor relationships,” he says.

In practice, experts say, the first companies to switch are likely to be big corporations with major market clout; others may follow. For boards, the salient issue should not be the burden of quarterly reporting, but whether the company has enough market strength to communicate less often. “There’s just no one-size-fits-all,” remarks Graves.

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