Whether you like it or not, data is a big part of our lives today. There is no escaping it. Every time you make a purchase online, watch a movie on a streaming platform, click on a pop up window that is notifying you of a sale on air fares, and even simply use your credit card to make an in-store purchase, data is being collected, analyzed and served back to you. In real-time.
The trend in the landscape for company information (both financial and non-financial) is no different. Recently, Mohini Singh from the CFA Institute discussed how company information is being consumed in the new age. Since 2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission has required companies to file their 10-Ks and 10-Qs in a structured data format (XBRL), thus propelling their legacy EDGAR system into the 21st century. Now, investors, analysts, corporate professionals, auditors, and yes, even the regulators themselves, like the SEC, no longer have to search through pages of static PDF or HTML documents to look for information and data to conduct analyses. This can now be done with a few clicks of a button on your computer, and even on your smart device!
The CFA Institute's report provides a great overview of how data providers are innovating in this space. Not only are we proud to be mentioned in this report, we’re also excited to see that the report discusses many of the innovations that idaciti has achieved. idaciti has leveraged the structured data to make your financial analyses more efficient, easier, valuable and fun! On our platform, not only can users pull up detailed financial and textual information in real-time (literally minutes after a company submits their filing with the SEC), users can also generate interactive graphs of the data and drill-down in to the details. Like, how much of Apple’s revenues in 2018 Q2 were generated in the United States compared to Europe. You will find that answer within minutes of Apple making that information publicly available in their quarterly filing.
This is just one of many innovative things we have done. Our team of experts have pushed the boundaries far beyond just consuming this structured data. We have taken the technology and structured data framework to the next level. We heard from the market a need for non-financial data to be structured. So, we leveraged the XBRL framework and technology to "structure the unstructured data" that is often found in earnings releases and the Management, Discussion and Analyses (MD&As) section of corporate filings. Now, users can pull up critical non-GAAP data, like Facebook’s average monthly and daily active users, to generate a graph to see the growth over time…in seconds. Better still, users can now pull up Twitter’s non-GAAP Net Income and, with a click of a button, be taken to the exact location in the Earnings Release where this non-GAAP data is disclosed and can now analyze the adjustments Twitter made to go from GAAP Net Income to non-GAAP Net Income.
Structured reporting is most effective when it is applied broadly to all aspects of reporting—that is, to earnings releases and all regulatory filings, MD&As, proxy statements, and tax reporting.
Mohini Singh, CFA Institute
The SEC recently mandated that all companies file both their structured data and HTML filings as a single document (‘inline XBRL’). They made the source code to view the inline XBRL corporate filings open-source. What did we do? Build on top of it, of course! On the idaciti’s version of the inline XBRL viewer, you can pull up ANY data point within a given filing and view the historical trend and compare that company’s data to its peers, all within the document exactly where the company discusses the data.
In addition, you can now search for all topic-specific data points within a given filing, irrespective of where the company discloses it. Imagine trying to find the debt maturities table for Pfizer within the 107 pages of a recent Pfizer 10-Q…and Pfizer does not have a debt footnote. With our inline XBRL viewer, you can do that within seconds.
On the idaciti platform, investors can use the Disclosure Research checklist to identify where a company may disclose certain topic areas.
Mohini Singh, CFA Institute
As a structured data provider, we believe in creating a platform that's capable of providing credible data and we also believe in engaging the users to explore the information to discover insights. Modern technology has enabled data to be consumed in a new way, and we are excited to be part of this movement.
