Where the numbers come from: SEC/EDGAR, XBRL, freshness, accuracy, and why a figure can differ from Yahoo. 10 questions.
Does Beat Index cover IFRS filers and foreign companies?
What it means
Yes. Foreign companies that list in the U.S. file a 20-F with the SEC, often under IFRS. Beat Index handles both U.S. GAAP and IFRS filings, applying the right methodology for each standard.
Many large foreign companies, including major European, Asian, and pharmaceutical firms, have shares or ADRs trading in the U.S. and are therefore required to file with the SEC on Form 20-F. Most of those filers report under IFRS rather than U.S. GAAP. The XBRL tags differ between the two standards, and some metrics are defined differently (for example, IFRS allows capitalizing certain costs that GAAP expenses). Beat Index is aware of these differences and applies IFRS-appropriate logic when parsing those filings, rather than forcing a GAAP template onto them. If you are comparing a U.S. company to a foreign IFRS filer, the underlying accounting standards differ, and we surface that so you can factor it into your analysis.
The figures come from audited XBRL filings, so they reflect exactly what the company reported to the SEC. The audit opinion covers the financial statements; our job is to read those statements faithfully and compute ratios consistently.
Every figure you see is pulled from the XBRL data the company submitted with its 10-K or 10-Q. Annual figures are audited by an independent accounting firm; quarterly figures are reviewed (a lighter standard, but still covered by the auditor). Our accuracy risk is in the parsing and ratio logic, not in the source data. We test extensively to make sure our formulas match what the filing reports, and when we apply a sector-specific adjustment (like excluding CapEx from a bank's free cash flow calculation, because banks do not file CapEx in XBRL), we document why. We also run our computed metrics against independent cross-checks. If a figure ever looks wrong to you, the source tag is there so you can check the filing directly.
Metrics update after each new 10-K or 10-Q is filed and parsed. There can be a short lag between when a company publishes its filing and when the updated numbers appear on Beat Index.
The filing is the triggering event: a company files its 10-Q, EDGAR makes the XBRL data available, and Beat Index picks it up in the next parse cycle. In practice that means most companies are current to their most recent quarterly filing, with any lag measured in hours to a day, not weeks. Around earnings season, when dozens of companies file at the same time, the queue can stretch slightly. If you are looking at a company right after a fresh filing and the numbers have not updated yet, you will see the prior quarter reflected, and we display the period the data covers so you always know which filing you are looking at.
What happens when a company restates its earnings?
How it works
When a company restates, it files amended documents with the SEC. Beat Index reflects the restated figures because the amended filing becomes the official record.
A restatement means the company has gone back to the SEC and filed corrected financials, usually as an amended 10-K (10-K/A) or 10-Q (10-Q/A). That amendment is the authoritative version, and EDGAR marks it as such. Beat Index picks up the amended filing in the next parse cycle, so the numbers you see will reflect what the company now says it earned, not the original figures. If you remember the original and the restated number looks different, that is the restatement at work, not an error on our side. Restatements are relatively rare, but when they happen, the SEC filing record is always the place to look for the official version of events.
What if a company has not filed its latest quarter yet?
How it works
If the filing has not hit EDGAR yet, Beat Index shows the most recently available quarter and labels it clearly. We do not extrapolate or estimate the missing period.
Companies have a deadline to file after each quarter ends (typically 40 days for large accelerated filers, 45 days for smaller filers), but many file earlier or later, and some request extensions. Between when a quarter closes and when the 10-Q lands on EDGAR, the most recent data we have is the prior quarter. The period label on every metric tells you which filing it reflects, so you always know whether you are looking at the latest filed quarter or a slightly older one. If you are checking a company right after earnings season and the data looks stale, it is likely the filing is in flight. Check back in a day or two, or look up the company's filing date directly on EDGAR.
EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval) is the SEC's free public database of every filing that U.S. public companies are legally required to submit, including 10-Ks, 10-Qs, and proxy statements.
The SEC phased in mandatory electronic filing through the mid-1990s, and EDGAR has been publicly searchable ever since. Structured, machine-readable XBRL data (the part Beat Index parses) was layered on later, required for most large companies from 2009 onward. If a company's shares trade on a U.S. exchange, its filings are in EDGAR, with XBRL-tagged financials available for recent years. Because it is the official regulatory record, EDGAR is the most authoritative source of financial data that exists for U.S. public companies. Beat Index uses EDGAR as its foundation: we pull the filing, parse the structured data, and present it to you with the source visible so you are always one click away from the original document.
XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is the structured tagging format that companies attach to every figure in their SEC filings so it can be read by software, not just humans. It is what makes machine-scale financial analysis possible.
Before XBRL, every analyst had to read a PDF and type numbers into a spreadsheet by hand, which meant errors and inconsistency. Now every line item in a 10-K or 10-Q is tagged with a standardized label from the GAAP taxonomy (for U.S. filers) or the IFRS taxonomy (for foreign private issuers). Those tags tell you not just what a number is, but exactly what accounting concept it represents and what period it covers. Beat Index reads those tags directly, which means we know precisely which EDGAR concept maps to, say, "operating cash flow" for each company, rather than guessing from a column header. When the tag is ambiguous or missing, we tell you that, rather than quietly filling the gap.
Every number on Beat Index comes directly from the company's own SEC filing, parsed straight from EDGAR, the public database where every U.S. public company is required to file its reports.
When a company publishes a 10-K (annual report) or 10-Q (quarterly report), it must submit the financial data in a structured, machine-readable format called XBRL alongside the narrative filing. Beat Index reads that structured data directly, ties every figure to the exact tag it came from, and computes ratios on top of it. There is no vendor in the middle re-keying or normalizing the numbers. What the company filed is what you see, and we show our work so you can trace every figure back to its source.
Why does your number sometimes differ from another site's?
Why
Usually because a vendor-aggregated site has made a normalization choice (or introduced a restatement) that differs from what the company actually filed. Beat Index ties every figure to the exact XBRL tag, so ours is always traceable.
Three things cause most discrepancies. First, a data vendor may restate or relabel a figure during their normalization process, and their definition of a metric (say, "operating income") may differ from the tag the company used. Second, there are genuine choices in how totals are constructed: different platforms define "free cash flow" or "net debt" differently. Third, timing: one site may have parsed the latest filing while another has not caught up yet. Because Beat Index surfaces the source tag and period for every figure, you can see exactly how we arrived at ours. When you want to investigate a discrepancy, start by checking which period each site is showing and which line items they rolled up.
N/A means the figure is structurally absent from the filing for that company type, not that we could not find it. We mark it honestly rather than filling the gap with an estimate.
Some metrics simply do not apply to certain kinds of companies, and those companies do not file the underlying XBRL tags. Banks, for example, do not file capital expenditure in their cash-flow XBRL statements (their business model does not have CapEx the same way a manufacturer does), so CapEx and metrics that depend on it are N/A for banks. Oil and gas companies often do not separately break out operating income the way a software company does. Foreign IFRS filers may omit tags that exist only in the GAAP taxonomy. In every case, the gap comes from the filing itself, not from a failure in our parsing. We think showing an honest N/A is far better than making up a number or silently substituting a proxy. If you want to understand why a specific metric is N/A for a specific company, the sector methodology note on that metric will explain the structural reason.