2008 EDGAR, NYSE and NASDAQ Holiday Calendars

With the markets closed on Friday in observance of Independence Day in the U.S., here are links to official holiday calendars for 2008. Note that the NYSE and NASDAQ both close early on Thursday, July 3.

Calendar of US Federal Holidays (EDGAR)

NYSE Holiday Calendar

NASDAQ Holiday Calendar

SEC Releases Rule Proposal on the use of Interactive Data (XBRL)

Here’s an item from Business Wire’s Michael Becker, VP of Global Disclosure & Reporting Services:

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed that issuers provide corporate financial statement information to the Commission in interactive data (XBRL) format.

If adopted, the first interactive data provided under the new rules would be made public in early 2009. The remaining companies using U.S. GAAP would provide this disclosure over the following two years. Companies using International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board would provide this disclosure for fiscal periods ending in late 2010.

Additional proposed items:

• In the initial year of a company’s filing, they would be required to provide single identifiers (tags) for each footnote and schedule but starting in year two of XBRL submission, the company would be required to provide more detailed identifiers for elements within the footnotes themselves.
• XBRL documents would be submitted in addition to the official ASCII or HTML filing and then filed at the same time. The only exception to this rule is that the first time a company submits in XBRL format and the first time they provide detailed tagging of the footnotes, the company would be allowed a 30 day grace period after the traditional filing during which they could submit the XBRL documents.
• Companies also would be required to post this information on their websites.

Business Wire is the only newswire service with in-house XBRL expertise and is prepared to help your company transition to XBRL reporting quickly and easily. Our EarningsDirect service is a simple, non-technical method for tagging EDGAR filings and earnings news releases in XBRL format.

The process couldn’t be easier; we convert the data to XBRL for you. Analysts, investors and the financial media receive your financials in XBRL format with a special PDF file, the Interactive Financial Statement (IFS). The IFS allows users to quickly understand, via detailed TagTips, how your financials have been tagged in XBRL. The IFS also contains the raw XBRL required for market participants to analyze the data in real time.

• Here are the Business Wire and CoreFiling news releases related to the announcement.
• Learn more about our XBRL joint venture, CoreFiling.
• To learn more about XBRL, contact Business Wire’s Michael Becker.

SEC Open Meeting on XBRL (Update: Date Change)

The SEC on Wednesday issued a Sunshine Act notice that on Monday, April 21, there will be an SEC Open Meeting to consider a possible rule for interactive data, also known as XBRL. The text of the rule itself will be published shortly after the meeting and we of course will keep you updated as to what develops.

Update: The SEC has changed the date of this meeting to Thursday Wednesday, May 14. The reason given in the SEC notice: “At times, changes in Commission priorities require alterations in the scheduling of meeting items.”

Investor Relations & Disclosure Practices - Observations on Academic Research

We came across this interesting blog post by John Palizza, Rice University instructor and founding partner of Palizza Partners who was prepping for his investor relations class. His post provides a summary of various research findings related to investor relations and disclosure practices. Here’s a highlight: “improvements in the quality and quantity of voluntary disclosures improves a stock’s share price, trading volumes and narrows the bid - ask spread. The result of all this is increased liquidity and decreased volatility.”

There are a number of additional conclusions he draws about IR as it relates to the size of the company as well as the positive effects of having an ongoing, transparent investor relations effort. Very interesting. (apologies for errors in the original post - TB)

Business Wire Announces New Website Design, SEO, and Multimedia Features

  

Following a successful soft launch in December, we are glad to officially announce our new website upgrade. Over the next few blog posts we’ll discuss the changes we made on our site. The overarching theme of all these updates is making the content we distribute on behalf of our clients as accessible as possible to all the different user groups who look for it, and in the ways they look for it. First, our new and improved website design and accessibility. 

So how is the new website design different and better now? Here’s what we did:

Redesign: 

After successfully introducing a few new international websites in 2007, we were ready to shower our main website with some additional attention as well. So in order to make the site look more up-to-date we decided to make it a bit cleaner, less cluttered, and make more effective use of white space. We’ve also reorganized some of our pages in a way that makes important content visible to those looking for it, and in a way that fits the ways in which they look for it. Below is a screen grab of the new homepage design:

  

    

In addition to the improved look-and-feel, the new homepage structure strikes a good balance between offering news content and highlighting Business Wire’s key products and services. It highlights various important products such as our PR, IR, and Media services, while still displaying our news feed in a visible place on the page. It also highlights more clearly many important features such as our RSS links, tradeshow news, Business Wire’s own news, and more. This updated look and structure extends to our internal pages as well. Here is a screenshot of our new Products and Services section: 

 

 

Search and User Visibility: 

On the accessibility front, we’ve updated our website code to include improved labeling and tagging of different parts of our pages, in order to make it easier for search engines to spider our content; made it simpler and leaner under the hood so that pages load faster; optimized the site for some newer versions of web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari; and switched to a unified URL structure that also makes our content more search friendly and enables more accurate traffic measurement. All these increase the likelihood of our clients’ press releases showing up higher in search results, and of users being able to more easily and quickly access our clients’ releases.

Search Engine Optimization is a moving target, and there are no silver bullets. However, we continuously enhance our SEO efforts. Examples of this include offering our EON: Enhanced Online News search and social-media-ready platform; continuously providing our clients with tips and best practices on how to better communicate in the new media landscape and make their content as web-friendly as possible; and helping clients understand how to combine SEO efforts across press releases, new online services, and their own websites. Our continuous upgrades, like the one we’ve announced today, is another example of how keep making our content as accessible as possible.  We encourage you to check out our new site design, and as usual, feel free to let us know what you think.

The official press release is here. Stay tuned for more on our multimedia and sharing updates.

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Is it Mandatory XBRL?!

The SEC Advisory Committee on Improvement to Financial Reporting (CIFiR), in a Draft Decision Memo and at its January 11th meeting, recommended the SEC transition to mandatory XBRL for all companies. CIFiR recommended the SEC phase-in XBRL as follows:

• The largest 500 domestic public reporting companies should be required to “furnish” XBRL tagged face financial statements and “block tagged” footnotes;
• One year later, all domestic “large accelerated filers” (~2,000 Companies) should be required to “furnish” XBRL tagged face financial statements and “block tagged” footnotes to the SEC.
• During the phase-in period, the SEC and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) should seek input from companies, investors, and other market participants as to the experience of such persons in preparing and using XBRL tagged financial statements using the U.S. GAAP taxonomies, and related costs. The SEC should consider conducting or commissioning a study of the rate of errors by companies in using the appropriate XBRL tags in comparison to the financial statement items. At the end of the phase-in period described above, and as promptly as practicable after the preconditions to full implementation discussed above are met, the SEC should evaluate the results from the phase-in period to determine whether and when to move from furnishing to official filing of XBRL tagged financial statements for domestic large accelerated filers, as well as the inclusion of all other reporting companies.

Webcast - Transformations in Trading: A Look at the Expanding Role of News in Trading Decisions

We’ve just posted the webcast for our recent New York conference - Transformations in Trading: A Look at the Expanding Role of News in Trading Decisions.

• Listen to this webcast (2 hrs 18 mins)

This event features a panel of government, media and financial industry insiders that will explain how algorithmic trading, RSS feeds, blogs and interactive data are permanently reshaping investor relations, the news media and the investment community.

Moderator:

• Hulus Alpay - President, NIRI New York and Senior Vice President, Makovsky & Company

Panelists:

• David Blaszkowsky - Director, Office of Interactive Disclosure, United States Securities and Exchange Commission
• Keith Ackerman - Global Head, Next Generation Research, Thomson Financial
• Martin Howell - Editor, Company news, The Americas, Reuters
• Joseph Saluzzi - Partner, Co-Founder and Co-Head of Equity Trading, Themis Trading LLC

(Click Here for Bios)

Google Comments Offers New Opportunities for Communicators

  

One of the goals of our Business Wired blog is to provide readers with better tools for communicating their messages in the ever-changing media landscape. Today we are happy to highlight a service we’ve been following with much interest that we and our friends in Google News thought would be of value to Business Wire clients.  

Earlier this year Google News launched a comments feature that allows individuals or organizations that are mentioned in news articles to add their own comments. Comments are then served up alongside those articles on Google News.  

Josh Cohen, Google News’ Product Manager explains: “Google News has always tried to present as many sources as possible to give our users a wide spectrum of views on the news.  Comments is an experimental feature that we believe will continue this goal by letting readers see exactly what people in a story think about current news.  We think this will help us increase the number of diverse and meaningful points of view on the news.”  

So how is this different from any comment section or discussion board? Well, on Google News only persons or organizations who are specifically mentioned in the story can comment. Google News then contacts the person submitting the comment or others in their organization to verify their identity. As a result, each story is expected to have only a handful of highly relevant comments that give readers a more in-depth look at topics in the news. Cohen adds: “their insight will both help readers understand the news, and cover views that may not be well-published or well-understood within the current coverage”. 

For PR professionals and marketers, this is an excellent opportunity to provide greater detail or clarifications when their press releases receive media pick-up. Also, it creates a new channel to follow-up on a press release with updates, success stories, or links to other relevant stories. Finally, it is another form of reaching out to your audience and participating in the conversation. While these comments differ from commenting on blogs or engaging in social networks, they can be a valuable part of the new communications mix.  

So how can you comment on a story that is relevant to your company or client?  According to the instructions on Google News you should send an email to news-comments@google.com containing the following information:

1. Your comment (hyperlinks allowed, but no attachments)
2. A link to the story you are commenting on
3. Your contact details: name, title, and organization
4. A way to verify your email address

Verification is one of the central components of Google’s comments feature. Therefore it is highly recommended to provide as much information that Google News staff can use (for example adding contact details of persons who can verify your credentials, or, if you are submitting a comment on behalf of a client, demonstrating that you are indeed authorized to speak for them). Keep in mind that Google News will not edit comments once the sender is verified, so they will be posted exactly as you emailed them. 

So the next time your press release or related articles are shown on Google News and you feel you have more valuable input to share, this can be a great new outlet. Please look at the Google Comments instructions page for more details. 

As usual, we’re happy to hear what you think. If you’ve already used Google Comments or would like to share your own thoughts about it, feel free to comment below.

Yahoo! Finance Debuts Business Wire XHTML Feed

Today is a very satisfying day for many of us at Business Wire and we think it’s also a good day for investor relations. After several years of development and more than a year of working with our downstream partners, Business Wire’s XHTML feed is now being carried on Yahoo! Finance.

Why is this important? XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) enables us and IR professionals to break a decades-long limitation in how earnings tables are transmitted, presented and re-utilized. Limitations in data feeds and ANPA and ASCII languages and technology have meant that tables could be no longer than 70 characters in width, could not support underlines, bold text or bulleted lists. This means tables are often difficult for humans to read and harder for computers to parse in today’s automated times.

Earnings Tables that are Easier for Humans and Computers

Enter XHTML. With XHTML, we present tables that closely mirror how they appear in their original spread sheet format. Wider, with underlined headers and numbers. And they are more easily readable by humans and electronic systems. For humans, the benefits are obvious.

Look at these two examples of tables:

• The first, issued by Business Wire as it appears on Yahoo! Finance has white space, bolded headers, bulleted lists and clearly readable and aligned tables.
  
• The second, issued by a competitor as it appears on Yahoo! Finance, is still limited by the ASCII/ANPA restrictions.

Each element of the Business Wire NewsML press release in XHTML is tagged – the content within the headline, body copy, tables, contact information, etc. so that systems can find and utilize the exact data they need. This ultimately helps news organizations to speed the reporting of earnings results and further levels the playing field for access to corporate financial data.

XHTML enables users to easily cut and paste tables into an Excel spread sheet. With plain text tables, Excel has no idea where or how to parse the information into columns and that usually means lots of reformatting and re-keying of data.

This is a very big “next step” in our ongoing efforts to change the way media, syndicates, financial information services and consumer sites handle content. Our patented Internet “NX” delivery system is the backbone for this system. We have spent countless development hours and invested millions of dollars in building a smarter system to simultaneously deliver rich content to end users. We’re working on getting more systems online with XHTML in the near future.

SUN SPOTS: Blinded by the Light

“Sun spots” was a term used in the days of satellite transmissions to explain periodic outages that mysteriously knocked out news delivery to network recipients. It is perhaps poetic justice that Sun Microsystems’ CEO Jonathan Schwartz has given the term new meaning in the Internet Age.

Sun ballyhooed that it would meet disclosure of its quarterly earnings via a web posting on its own site, accompanied by RSS feeds to registered subscribers. Ten minutes later, Sun broadly disseminated the news release via a commercial wire service. The evidence suggests that Sun’s high-profile experiment had decidedly mixed results; in our view, it was clearly not the great leap forward that Schwartz had touted for months on his blog.

Not Simultaneous, Not Fair, Not Instantaneous
I eagerly tried to access Sun’s earnings at precisely 4 pm/Eastern. Unfortunately, I kept getting a “Page Not Found” message. It wasn’t until 4:06 pm that I was finally able to view Sun’s results. Given Sun’s enormous server capacity–after all, servers are Sun’s core business–Sun’s seeming inability to accommodate the demand speaks volumes about the real downside of web-only disclosure.

In other words, if Sun can’t handle the load, what are the realistic chances of smaller companies, with more limited server resources, to deal with spikes associated with material news announcements? Casual observers may dismiss a six-minute delay as minimal. However, in today’s financial markets, six minutes is an eternity. Program trading now drives the markets, and the new mantra on Wall Street is that milliseconds matter.

The numbers tell the story best: Reuters didn’t move its first take until 4:16; Yahoo! Finance posted Sun’s press release at 4:11 (after it moved on a commercial newswire). As for those accessing via RSS feeds, those times were all over the map and that’s because RSS feeds are not push technology, nor are they simultaneous. This means that the material information was not received simultaneously by all market participants. So what’s “full and fair” about that?

In our view, this isn’t what the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had in mind when it implemented Regulation FD in 2000 to “level the playing field.” We think these results fall far short of the investing public’s desire for full, fair and simultaneous disclosure.

Business Wire News: Secure, Free & Simultaneous
Business Wire has a secure (independently audited in multiple jurisdictions worldwide) real-time network that allows investors anywhere in the world to access news at no charge. For some unknown reason, Jonathan Schwartz continues to harp on the misconception that commercial news wires are only available via proprietary services. NOT TRUE. Anyone, anywhere can access Business Wire and its competitors via the world’s most popular financial portals, news sites, online services and databases–again, simultaneously, in real-time and in multiple languages.

Everyone has equal, unrestricted access to material news announcements under the current disclosure model. The playing field is indeed level. Further, Business Wire’s presence on the internet, in conjunction with its myriad distribution channels, far eclipses any individual company’s web posting. And yes, we even offer RSS feeds at no charge.

An Accurate, Third-Party Historical Record
Another key issue that has thus far been ignored is archival capabilities. All news releases transmitted over Business Wire are permanently stored in Lexis-Nexis, Factiva, and other popular databases for future reference. Further, the lack of a central clearinghouse for material news announcements under Schwartz’ web-only framework raises all sorts of interesting questions that the SEC and class action law firms, among others, will need to address.

Disclosure Innovators & Experts
Business Wire is clearly not resting on its laurels and is constantly evaluating all new technologies. Just ask our CIO, Steve Messick, who was named one of the Premier 100 IT Leaders by Computerworld Magazine in 2003. The reality is that Business Wire has and will continue to push the envelope when it comes to disclosure, from its patented NX news delivery technology, to its leading role in providing public companies with turnkey XBRL solutions worldwide. But we’ll do it in a way that enhances transparency.

As the leading disseminator of material information for 46 years, this is our “circle of competence.” We are passionate about what we do because we believe strongly that broad and simultaneous dissemination of the press release remains at the heart of the disclosure process. We trust that all the other “commentators” have the experience and credentials to speak intelligently about this important topic.

We salute Jonathan Schwartz on Sun Microsystems’ strong quarterly performance. But with all due respect, we think the CEO of Sun should “stick to his knitting” and leave the important business of disclosure to the experts.

–Cathy Baron Tamraz, President and CEO, Business Wire