Earnings Releases Are Not Filings

When a company reports its quarterly results, the first document investors see is the earnings press release (often filed via Form 8-K). It contains management's summary of the quarter, headline figures, and usually, a set of “adjusted” or non-GAAP metrics.

However, as Investor.gov explicitly notes, the 10-K (annual report) and 10-Q (quarterly report) are the core SEC reports for a business's risks, operations, and actual financial results. Unlike the glossy annual shareholder report or the bulleted earnings release, the 10-K and 10-Q are comprehensive legal documents.

Form 10-Qs carry executive certifications under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), imposing personal legal liability on the CEO and CFO. Form 10-Ks go a step further, requiring full independent audits. An earnings release carries no such audit requirement and often highlights the numbers management wants you to see.

Recent commentary from the CFA Institute argues forcefully that earnings releases are not substitutes for 10-Qs. The full set of GAAP-compliant financial statements, including the complete Statement of Cash Flows and the extensive footnotes found in a 10-Q, are frequently omitted or highly condensed in the initial press release.

This is why many institutional-grade screening and research tools, such as Stock Rover, explicitly wait for the full GAAP-compliant SEC filings rather than updating core financials based on the initial earnings announcement. They recognize that initial press releases often rely on pro forma figures that can be inconsistent, preventing true “apples-to-apples” comparisons between companies.

When companies issue earnings releases, they almost always headline with non-GAAP metrics like “Adjusted EPS” or “Adjusted EBITDA.” While Regulation G requires companies to eventually reconcile these numbers to GAAP, the headlines obscure real costs.

Take tech companies, for example. In their earnings releases, many will “add back” stock-based compensation (SBC), treating it as if it isn't a real expense. But SBC represents real dilution to shareholders. A company might report a non-GAAP profit in its press release while its 10-Q reveals a GAAP net loss due to massive equity payouts to employees.

Similarly, one-time tax penalties or restructuring costs are frequently stripped out of the earnings release narrative. Apple's Q4 2024 results saw a massive $10.2 billion gap between GAAP and non-GAAP net income due to a European tax ruling. NVIDIA's Q1 FY2025 non-GAAP net income was over $350 million higher than its GAAP net income, largely by excluding stock-based compensation and acquisition costs.

If you only read the press release, you see the business exactly how management wants you to see it: with all the bad news adjusted away.

At DeepFundamental, we don't build models off the headline numbers from an 8-K press release. We parse the actual 10-Q and 10-K SEC filings directly.

By relying strictly on the audited and SOX-certified data, every line item traces back to the original filing. We preserve the company's own GAAP reporting structure so that you can see exactly where cash is flowing, how much equity is being diluted, and what the real operational costs are — without the spin.