Annual Report

A report that public companies are required to file annually that describes the preceding year’s financial results and plans for the upcoming year. Annual reports include information about a company’s assets, liabilities, earnings, profits, and other year-end statistics. If the public can buy stock in a company, that company has to issue a report every year that explains how well it did in the past year and what its strategy is for next year. The report includes what the company owns, how much it owes, how much it earns, what its profits are, and other facts that someone who is thinking about buying stock in the company might want to know.