Distinguishing Statement Dates from Earnings Publication Dates

Summary

The discussion clarifies that a financial statement’s reporting date and the date its figures were published are different data points. For historical earnings-event research, the publication date is the relevant event date; using only the statement date can misalign information with when investors could have known it.

It also notes that restatements can create multiple publication dates associated with the same reporting period, since corrected figures may be released later. The answer points to commercial financial databases as sources that record both dates and suggests looking for a lower-cost alternative. It is uncertain whether that alternative includes both fields. The exchange does not compare vendors, verify coverage across US and European equities, or establish how far back any source’s history extends, so researchers would need to check those details before relying on a dataset.

Key ideas

• A reporting-period end date is distinct from the date the financial figures become public.
• Historical event studies should use the publication date to represent when information became available.
• Restatements may produce additional publication dates linked to an earlier reporting period.
• The suggested lower-cost data source is tentative, and its coverage of both dates is not confirmed.

Tags

# Where to Find Historical Earning Event (Quarterly Figures Dissemination) Dates?


# Where to Find Historical Earning Event (Quarterly Figures Dissemination) Dates?












I am looking for a data source / database that holds historical (10 years, better 20 years) dates of US and European stocks:

I need the historical date when the quarterly (or annual) fundamental data of that company was published in the past.

So in short terms: I need the historical Earning Event dates.

Solutions like Reuters or Bloomberg would possibly be too expensive... :-(

## Answer by Peter (score -1)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/36094

The publication date differs from the statement date. If the statement date is '2016-12-31', the publication date could be '2017-02-15'. Sometimes, thera are restatements (=annual report is republished with corrected new numbers) where publication date is '2017-02-15' for statement date '2015-12-31'. Both dates are published in Reuters databases. If this is too expensive, try to find this on Quandl (I'm not sure if they have both dates).

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This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.