Each year, once the numbers become available, we like to take a look at some of the SEC filings stats for the prior year. As we tweeted on Friday, there were 668,635 filings made to the SEC in 2014, which represented a modest uptick from the 655,846 filings made in 2013. But those numbers really only tell a small piece of the story.
As we do each year, we asked the folks at Morningstar Document Research to help us crunch the numbers to figure out which date is the busiest day for filings (Valentine’s Day…again), which companies filed the most filings (pick your favorite large financial services firm), and which companies filed the largest ones.
LendingClub Corp., which IPO’d in December, was the “winner” there. We usually look at the 10 largest filings of the year, and this year, LendingClub was responsible for all 10. Based on our research, those 10 filings amounted to nearly 73,000 pages of text! Other than the junior associates who wrote those documents, we have to wonder how many people actually read them!
While we’ve always focused on large filings, recent research shows that something as simple as the size of a 10-K can be a good indication of confusing financials, even if you never open the actual filing and try to dive in. With that in mind, we found it interesting that Hertz Global Holdings filed the single largest 10-K last year. The 10-K that they filed on March 19, 2014, weighed in at just under 2,000 pages.
Regular readers of footnoted know that we like to focus on the Friday Night Dump, where we focus on filings made after 4 pm est on Fridays. Of the 74,907 8Ks filed in 2014, just over 8% were filed after 4 pm on a Friday, which shows that many companies continue to file late on a Friday, despite the prevalence of Twitter and the so-called 24-hour news cycle. Indeed, we now publish a separate feed for our Pro subscribers that focuses on those late Friday disclosures.
We’ll continue to dig through the filings. Best wishes for a successful 2015.
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Journalists who are interested in seeing all the numbers behind today’s story can contact Michelle directly for more details.
