Earning season is a critical time for companies, since so much is riding on the reports they issue. You would think they would be ultra-careful about everything surrounding the release of those earnings reports. But no. On at least three instances so far in this earnings season, the reports have leaked before the scheduled announcement.
First it was Google, which had its report filed early by its printer, R.R. Donnelley, and was forced to release its earnings early in the morning last Thursday, rather than after the closing bell, as initially expected. Google missed its earnings expectations by quite a bit, and may have been able to cushion the blow with a little more time to prepare. As it was, the stock lost $19 billion off its market cap that day.
And the errors continued. Dow Chemical was supposed to release earnings on Wednesday, but someone at Dow emailed a draft of the report to Bloomberg News late on Tuesday night. Dow ended up releasing its earnings close to midnight that same night. Then Daimler had a similar incident, when a PR person hit "send" instead of "save." You would think these major corporations would have the drill down by now.
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