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Form 10-K and 10-Q
Also called: 10-K, 10-Q, annual report, quarterly report, NT 10-K, NT 10-Q, Form 12b-25
The annual (10-K) and quarterly (10-Q) reports US public companies file with the SEC, containing their financial statements and management’s discussion.
Explanation
The 10-K is the annual report, with audited financial statements, the business description (Item 1), risk factors (Item 1A), management’s discussion and analysis (Item 7) and the auditor’s report. The 10-Q covers each of the first three fiscal quarters with reviewed, unaudited statements. Their cover pages report shares outstanding, and the 10-K cover also reports public float.
Deadlines depend on size. Large accelerated filers have 60 days after year-end for the 10-K and 40 days after quarter-end for the 10-Q; accelerated filers 75 and 40 days; all others 90 and 45. A company that cannot make it files Form 12b-25 (an “NT 10-K” or “NT 10-Q”), which buys 15 more calendar days for a 10-K and 5 for a 10-Q.
For dilution work, the useful parts are the liquidity section of MD&A, the subsequent-events note (offerings after quarter-end), the equity note (warrants, options, ATM sales) and any going-concern paragraph.
Why it matters
These reports confirm cash, burn and share count. A late filing is itself a warning: an NT 10-K often comes before restatements, auditor changes or listing notices.
How Equity Dictionary measures it
Financial statements come from the XBRL data in these reports. The research brief reads the 10-K business and risk-factor sections, and the going-concern check searches the last 15 months of 10-K, 10-Q and 20-F filings. If a report filed at least two days ago has not reached SEC XBRL data, runway is not scored and confidence drops a step; an NT 10-K or NT 10-Q filed after the latest report drops confidence to Low.
Related terms
- XBRL: The machine-readable tags SEC filers attach to every number in their financial statements, so software can read financials without parsing documents.
- Going concern: An accounting warning that a company may not be able to keep operating and paying its bills over the next year without raising money or restructuring.
- Form 8-K: The current report a company must file within four business days of a major event, organized into numbered items.
- Form 20-F and 6-K: The annual report (20-F) and current reports (6-K) that foreign private issuers listed in the US file in place of the 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K.
- Trailing twelve months (TTM): The sum of the last four reported quarters, giving an annual figure that updates every quarter instead of once a year.
Plain-English summary for research; not legal or investment advice.