Interim Reporting The company you work for is considering going public. Your curr...

Interim Reporting

The company you work for is considering going public. Your current position is in the external financial reporting group. The manager you work for wants you to review some public company quarterly reports, Form 10-Qs, to see what type of information is disclosed. The manager does not want you to perform technical research to determine what the exact reporting requirements are for the Form 10-Q but to understand generally what information other companies seem to be supplying in their Form 10-Qs.

Required

a. Determine the name of two public companies you would like to use in your review of Form 10-Qs. ( Hint: There are various ways to determine the public companies you want to research. For example, you could use an Internet search engine to find a home page of a public company. A helpful search term is “Company Home Pages.” Another method would be to select public companies you already know of or you find through the use of a newspaper or periodical.)

b. Using the EDGAR database, locate the most recent Form 10-Qs for the two companies you selected. ( Hint: The Internet URL for the SEC’s home page is http://www.sec.gov/ . The SEC provides a company search engine for its EDGAR database.) In addition, for one of these companies, locate the Form 10-Q for the same period in the prior year. Prepare a one- to two-page summary after the following:

(1) Write a brief summary of the contents of one company’s recent doing Form 10-Q. Discuss how the Form 10-Q information compares with the information you know is included in a Form 10-K, which is the annual report to the SEC.

(2) Review the same company’s Form 10-Q from the previous year and discuss the similarities and differences you notice in the Form 10-Qs for different time periods.

(3) Review the other company’s Form 10-Q from the current year and discuss the similarities and differences you notice in the Form 10-Qs for the two companies.