| ▲ | ghufran_syed 7 hours ago | |
as the time period gets longer, the the more likely it is that the numbers represent the true performance of the business rather than randomness. That has to be balanced against the fact that investors get less frequent updates i.e. the information is now potentially 6 months out of date rather than 3 months at worst. But then its just a judgment call of the relative benefit of each - you could argue that with modern accounting systems, modern companies could deliver weekly or even daily earnings , which would give investors much more timely information, and the high frequency would probably mean it wouldn’t be worth making the effort for management to fudge the numbers to bring forward or delay revenue one day or one week. There would be a lot more variance in the numbers if they were daily, but thats a good thing - it would just reflect the underlying randomness, and then the investors could decide when the accumulated trend over a period of time is meaningful or not, instead of management wasting time massaging numbers into a fairy tale of steady growth. | ||
| ▲ | mattclarkdotnet 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
In every sales-led company quarter end is a shitshow. It'll be even worse if there's only one chance to bring the numbers back in instead of 2 or 3. It's used to put pressure on sales teams, but the net result over the year is never good because it sours relationships and reduces overall deal value. The best thing would be continuous daily or weekly reporting with no defined year end. Unfortunately the entire global system of tax and accounting is set up around annual reporting, so change is impossible. | ||
| ▲ | vasco 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
How is 2 data points a year "representing the true performance of the business" but 4 data points a year is randomness? You also get less frequent CPU usage % datapoints when you want to be sure about usage? That makes no sense at all. | ||