Form 10-K

What is it: Form 10-K is filed annually by publicly traded company (except foreign private issuer, which files Form 20-F instead) to disclose its financial condition and operating performance comprehensively. It provides more detailed information than Form ARS. A company with assets more than $10 million and is held by more than 500 owners are required to file 10-K annually. The primary components of 10-K include update on current business, risk factors, three years of audited financial statement, and management's discussion of financial condition. A complete list of items required on Form 10-K can be found at www.sec.gov.

Filing Time: Form 10-K must be filed 60 to 90 days after fiscal year-end depending on company size.

Related Form(s):

Form ARS
Form 8-K
Form 10-Q
Form 11-K
Form 10-KT
Form 10-QT

Form 10-KSB (obsolete 2009): An simplified version of 10-K. 10-KSB is filed by small businesses to disclose their financial conditions annually.

Form NT 10-K: Notice that a company is unable to file 10-K, 10-KSB, or 10-KT on time. NT 10-K extends the filing deadline by 15 days.

Form NTN 10K:

Tips: About 8,000~10,000 Form 10-K are filed each year by 8,000~10,000 different filers. About 1,400~2,400 Form NT 10-K (~20% of Form 10-K) are filed each year by 1,400~2,400 different filers (2008~2014 statistics). NT 10-K extends the filing deadline by 15 days. However, this does not guarantee that the additional deadline will be met. According to 2016 statistics, it takes an average of 21 days (median:8 days) to receive delayed period report. 63% companies can meet the 15 days deadline. In rare cases, period report could be delayed for 2 years! Investors should be cautious about missing deadline caused by potential accounting issue.

Unlike Form 10-Q (filed quarterly) and Form 8-K (filing for unscheduled material events), which are usually not audited, Form 10-K is the most comprehensive audited financial statement by publicly traded companies. Being audited means the accounting data was reviewed by financial auditor in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards (GAAS) and thus the accuracy is reasonably (not absolutely) assured. Despite of this, auditing errors happen from time to time in audited financial statements. An example is MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (MX), which had numerous accounting errors ended 2012 and 2011, that was spotted in 2014. The stock price of MX slided about 50% in three months after the auditing error was announced, and another ~50% after receiving delisting warning from NYSE because of poor accounting.