How to Keep Track of Earnings Releases for Public Companies

An easy way of tracking how a certain publicly-traded company is doing is by looking at their earnings releases for a given time period. These earnings releases contain critical information related to how a company is doing financially, which is critical for those in the public sector with an eye cast towards the ever-changing tide of the market, whether they be an investor, stockbroker, business reporter, or just a simple everyman who likes reading about company earnings. As such, it is paramount for these people to read earnings releases as soon as they become available.

Here are some easy and admittedly obvious ways to keep track of when earnings releases become available:

1. Using online databases

An easy and pain-free way of keeping track of the date in which publicly-traded companies make available their earnings releases is through the usage of so-called earnings calendars. Earnings calendars, as the name implies, list out the exact date (and time, if made available by the company, which is not often the case) by which certain companies release their earnings reports. Some of the most famous ones include Nasdaq and Bloomberg. Yahoo! Finance also has its own earnings calendar, as does the U.S. government through the SEC’s EDGAR system. These earnings calendars are free of charge to use and are rather simple to view even for the average layman, so one should not encounter much trouble when using these.

2. Subscribing to email newsletters and the like

Many companies, publicly traded or not, provide some sort of an email newsletter alert system wherein anyone who has a subscription gets sent information about the company. This information may range from the more mundane or even annoying ones (changes to their website's terms of use or an impending move to change their domain to another provider, or other such things that no one quite really reads) to extremely important and pertinent news (insider information about a new product offering or current trends within the company, or perhaps even a change in leadership that may cause the company's priorities to shift dramatically).

As these subscriptions cost practically nothing and are convenient to boot, those interested in following when earnings reports are released would do well subscribe to these. Not only do they do not have a downside (except perhaps having to clear your email inbox much more frequently now to avoid being buried in newsletter hell), they can let one have greater insight into a company's doing and financial future by giving you information that may be hard to find or scrounge up elsewhere.

3. Listening in to earnings calls

An extremely surefire way of keeping track of earnings releases is, of course, listening to the exact moments these releases are made: during earnings calls. This method ensures that you don't even have to keep track of when earnings reports release, simply because you were there for the earnings call anyway, which would make waiting for the earnings release - which basically just summarizes the content of the call - somewhat redundant. You can also make your own notes during the call itself, and maybe even get to ask questions if the moderator let participants to the call do so, which would guarantee that you get the exact stuff that you need.

4. Asking for a copy yourself

Companies often post their earnings releases without having to be prompted by anybody since it is also in their best interests to do so. One may find, however, that some companies simply forget to make publicly available their earnings releases. In this case, try taking the initiative yourself by contacting somebody from the company and asking for a copy of the earnings release, or failing that, even just a transcript of the earnings call.