A corporation's annual report is usually a colored, professionally presented, and marketable document intended for an audience of shareholders.
10-K:
The 10-K report is submitted to the SEC in a generic format, with no pictures or charts. The SEC has very strict guidelines on what information must be included and how it must be organized.
Edit: I'm glad to see this is the #1 post on HN (at the time of this writing) even though the author, like many individual and some institutional investors, innocently do not know the difference between a company's PR-like annual report and an SEC-audited 10-K form. Hopefully the upvotes will draw attention to this common misconception which is also discussed by the SEC:
Prior to 2003 though, the artworks themselves (shown in OP) do say '10K', like they're cover pages or something.
From then on, they're 'annual report's.
I'm not familiar with US forms, but perhaps it's possible there used to be a vaguer reporting requirement called '10K', and the format had more freedom, but then from 2003 it was just a form to fill out separately to a flashy annual report to investors?
On the topic of Last10k, would you mind updating your iOS app? It wasn't cheap ($10) and still looks like it's formatted for an iPhone 8, not to mention the home screen icon is just a black square.
Like the ideas of reading 10K more efficiently. But to me, the text interface of Last10k could not deliver this promise. Visualization is IMO a much better way to quickly grasp information.
Possibly not the exact problem here, but it’s a general one I have with citizen journalism: writing up the “scoop” instead of reaching out for comment.
What happened was Barry McCarthy, who was CFO at Netflix till 2010, left Netflix. Barry was an exceedingly creative and forward thinking CFO. He was the CFO responsible for taking Spotify public via direct listing in 2018, which was an incredibly bold move at the time. Definitely creative as far as CFOs go.
I worked for a company that would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their annual report. Every year it was a big deal. There were meetings, interviews, photo shoots and a lot of late nights to make sure it was just perfect and on time. It was beautiful every year.
Then one year a new Chief of operations was hired. She reviewed costs and saw that the creative department was too expensive. She closed it and outsourced the work.
One thing that happened was that the annual report was turned into a plain accounting report which reported the needed information. Tada, no one really complained, people that needed the information got what they needed and a few hundred thousand dollars was saved every year. It never came back.
Like everything, the fancy designed reports (annual or otherwise) come and go out of fashion.
Yesterday it was a requirement.
Today it is too expensive and the COO got credit for cutting expenses.
Tomorrow the CFO is jealous of Company X's report and it's back.
Seems like an interesting thesis to test. Does internal brand recognition (annual reports that consumers probably won't see) carry any weight? Because consumer brand recognition sure does.
One of the reasons might be, that the SEC mandated all filers to submit the reports in XBRL Format starting in 2009 (foreign private issuers using IFRS followed 2017). It’s called Interactive Data by SEC and requires to tag each and every value with an XML element to give it an accounting meaning. The XBRL tools have not been able at that time to convert PDF or InDesign files, so all reports look rather ugly since then. I’m head of development team that invented a PDF Tagger; we sold it like warm bread during last month, because all EU listed companies are also mandated to submit iXBRL now. Btw, the cover page always looks that ugly because it must be the „form“ template from SEC.
Flashy 10-Ks are hugely annoying, especially in IFRS where there’s no standard. Give me tables all day every day. The lack of standardization in financial reporting already sinks enough of my time.
It seems like the blog is referencing the documents posted directly on Netflix's website[1], the early versions of which do open up with well-designed cover pages.
In contrast, the link you shared is perhaps the direct filings that the SEC receives from the company, which may remove these designed elements prior to filing.
I assume they are pulling these from Netflix's Investor Relations site. That is a very different question than what is officially filed, which is very different from what this blog presents.
I understand the point of the article, but if you're serious about reading company statements you (at least at first) skip all promo material / preso-looking pages and skip to the part looks the most boring. Literally, don't even look at them (at first). Or even better you can do it the Buffett way, read from the end to the beginning.
This strikes me as a very on-point answer. Other people have noted that "Annual Report" and "10-K" aren't precisely the same thing: the 10-K is the annual SEC filing, akin to the 10-Q filed quarterly. The annual report is what's sent to investors. It can just be the 10-K, but I've definitely seen many companies in the past that did what amount to full-color brochures. I'm pretty sure the phone company I worked at in the late 90s had very pretty ones, although not as witty as Netflix's.
My guess is that Netflix was still trying to establish itself. Many investors probably were skeptical to invest in Netflix so they wanted to create something more splashy to engage people.
At some point Netflix went from a niche service to being a mature established company that people are going to seek out. The splashiness was no longer needed.
I think it was honestly just a trend. Back then you used to have design students making annual reports for fun so they'd have something to pad out their portfolios. I'd wager that sort of thing is now towards the bottom of the list for most.
Why not doing two versions of the annual reports? One in plain text to meet the regulator’s requirement and the other one, shorter but more creative for the general audience and building of brand awareness? I believe it’s totally worth it.
I'm sure people here will recognize that a boring 10-k is easy for bots to parse and enter into computer systems that most users end up using. In fact 10-ks should probably have standardized XML format or similar for this.
I think the move makes sense. There are lots of avenues for creative advertising available to a company. Standard financial disclosures shouldn't be one of them, especially since more and more of them are being machine-read nowadays.
[+] [-] hbcondo714|5 years ago|reply
A corporation's annual report is usually a colored, professionally presented, and marketable document intended for an audience of shareholders.
10-K:
The 10-K report is submitted to the SEC in a generic format, with no pictures or charts. The SEC has very strict guidelines on what information must be included and how it must be organized.
Source: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/102714/what-are-dif...
Edit: I'm glad to see this is the #1 post on HN (at the time of this writing) even though the author, like many individual and some institutional investors, innocently do not know the difference between a company's PR-like annual report and an SEC-audited 10-K form. Hopefully the upvotes will draw attention to this common misconception which is also discussed by the SEC:
https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...
Disclosure / Shameless Plug:
I run https://Last10K.com which is an SEC.gov alternative for investors to find and read 10Ks more efficiently.
[+] [-] OJFord|5 years ago|reply
From then on, they're 'annual report's.
I'm not familiar with US forms, but perhaps it's possible there used to be a vaguer reporting requirement called '10K', and the format had more freedom, but then from 2003 it was just a form to fill out separately to a flashy annual report to investors?
[+] [-] nipponese|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etaioinshrdlu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sinuhe69|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gorgoiler|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nt2h9uh238h|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ntdef|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluedays|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carls|5 years ago|reply
McCarthy left in 2010. But it looks like the decline in the "designy"-ness began in 2006.
[+] [-] WheelsAtLarge|5 years ago|reply
Then one year a new Chief of operations was hired. She reviewed costs and saw that the creative department was too expensive. She closed it and outsourced the work.
One thing that happened was that the annual report was turned into a plain accounting report which reported the needed information. Tada, no one really complained, people that needed the information got what they needed and a few hundred thousand dollars was saved every year. It never came back.
[+] [-] breput|5 years ago|reply
Yesterday it was a requirement. Today it is too expensive and the COO got credit for cutting expenses. Tomorrow the CFO is jealous of Company X's report and it's back.
[+] [-] ekianjo|5 years ago|reply
Just like any kind of fun left in the company?
[+] [-] johnnyfived|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Moxdi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richx|5 years ago|reply
Here is a link to a more pretty report, also having XBRL tags: https://www.gleif.org/assets/components/xbrl-viewer/gleif-an...
[+] [-] formercoder|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] breput|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samtc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] breput|5 years ago|reply
https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&C...
[+] [-] carls|5 years ago|reply
In contrast, the link you shared is perhaps the direct filings that the SEC receives from the company, which may remove these designed elements prior to filing.
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[1] https://ir.netflix.net/financials/annual-reports-and-proxies...
[+] [-] breput|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] H8crilA|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stuu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chipotle_coyote|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geofft|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xivzgrev|5 years ago|reply
At some point Netflix went from a niche service to being a mature established company that people are going to seek out. The splashiness was no longer needed.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dorkwood|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sinuhe69|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] devmunchies|5 years ago|reply
if a goal of marketing is to stand out then its the perfect place. very little is off limits.
[+] [-] Simulacra|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Giftcard203|5 years ago|reply
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