Alternative performance measures' disclosure quality in the 2024 press release and management report

Alternative performance measures’ disclosure quality in the 2024 press release and management report Roy van Duuren, Ralph ter Hoeven Received 22 September 2025 | Accepted 15 October 2025 | Published 4 December 2025 Abstract This study examines the disclosure quality of alternative performance measures (APMs) in 2024 press releases and management reports. Based on the ESMA guidelines on APMs, we established a disclosure index to capture the disclosure quality amongst European listed companies. We find the disclosure quality in the management report to be significantly better than the disclosure quality in the press release while, notably, these press releases are often published before the external audit of the financial statements is completed. Moreover, it is not always clear from the press releases whether the GAAP financial information has been audited or not. Our study further showed that almost all companies applied APMs on their first page of their Q4 press releases and management reports. In addition, the effects of the forthcoming IFRS 18 standard are discussed in this study. Relevance to practice The outcomes of this study underpin the need for improvement disclosures of the use of APMs, particularly in press releases presenting financial results. The study can be relevant for, amongst others, issuers of financial statements, financial reporting standard setters and authoritative bodies. The study analyses selected high quality disclosures of APMs. Keywords Alternative performance measures, ESMA, IFRS 18, management performance measures, press release 1. Introduction Alternative performance measures (APMs) are frequently used by companies in financial statements and other public communications such as press releases (AFM 2024). The value relevance of APMs is however often debated. On the one hand, recent studies indicate that companies present APMs to meet the demand for additional, value-relevant information from the market (Veenman 2024). On the other hand, the Dutch Financial Markets Authority (AFM) points at the potential pitfalls of APMs and warns users to maintain a critical view of these alternative disclosures (AFM 2024). In this regard, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) considered already in 2015 that a common approach to APMs is necessary to ensure consistent, efficient and effective supervisory practices and a uniform and consistent application of the Transparency and Market Abuse Directive1 (ESMA 2015). In its 2024 market watch publication, the AFM concludes that the disclosure principles set out in the ESMA Guidelines are still frequently not adhered to, causing a threat to the transparency of financial reporting and an obstacle to users of financial information, including investors and analysts. Based on examples of misleading measures and adjustments and examples of more prominently disclosed APMs2 than GAAP measures, also the SEC staff published in December 2022 updated guidance on how it evaluates APM measures.3 Copyright Roy van Duuren, Ralph ter Hoeven. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Maandblad voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie 99(5) (2025): 255–268 DOI 10.5117/mab.99.172863 Research Article https://mab-online.nl Roy van Duuren, Ralph ter Hoeven: Alternative performance measures’ disclosure quality256 An additional motivation for this research is the publication in April 2024 of IFRS 18 Presentation and Disclosure in financial statements. IFRS 18 supersedes the existing IAS 1 standard and is effective for reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027, with earlier application permitted. One of the key concepts introduced by IFRS 18 is the introduction of so-called management-defined performance measures (MPMs) which effectively are a subset of APMs. The inclusion of MPMs within an IFRS standard means also that some APMs and respective disclosures (such as required reconciliations) must be included inside audited financial statements in the future. In a statement in 2024 (ESMA 2024), the ESMA encourages security issuers to start assessing the effects of the implementation of IFRS 18 on the APMs disclosed in communication documents, press releases, management reports and prospectuses and, where necessary, consider adjusting their reporting processes and systems to enable a smooth implementation of the standard. This study investigates the quality of the APM disclosures in press releases accompanying the 2024 financial results and the 2024 financial statements. We limited our scope of the study to only identify APMs applied by companies based on the first page of the press release or management report as we considered the first page typically highlights the most important metrics and hence capture the most important APMs. Furthermore, this study reflects on the involvement of the external auditor in the press release through examining whether GAAP financial information in the press release is audited or not and analyzing the timing difference between the press release and the auditors’ opinion. The article is structured as follows; section 2 covers a description of the relevant guidance and regulatory framework related to APMs and the forthcoming IFRS 18 standard; in section 3 the sample is described and further descriptive sample analyses are performed; section 4 covers an empirical research on the quality and use of APM disclosures. Concluding remarks and recommendations are provided in section 5. 2. Alternative performance measures As mentioned in the introduction, the ESMA has published guidelines on APMs for listed issuers (ESMA 2015). In this publication ESMA defines an APM as a financial measure of historical or future financial performance, financial position, or cash flows, other than a financial measure defined or specified in the applicable financial reporting framework. The guidelines stipulate 7 disclosure requirements regarding APMs: • Presentation • Reconciliations • Explanation on the use of the APMs • Prominence and presentation of APMs • Comparatives • Consistency • Compliance by reference We refer to Appendix 2 for a further explanation of these presentation and disclosure requirements. Regarding the legal status of these ESMA guidelines, it is good to note that these are in principle non-binding but have to be considered as ‘soft law’ administrative rules (Jana and McMeeking 2021).4 National competent authorities must make efforts to review the adherence to these guidelines in the interest of investors as is evidenced by the AFM Market Watch publication (AFM 2024). In this publication the status of the guidelines is clearly to be considered as additional listing rules as the AFM urges all security issuers under their supervision to adhere to the guidelines. The AFM also mentions the importance of the role of the auditors and advisers as both should play a pivotal role in ensuring that APMs do not obscure the transparency of financial information. The AFM urges auditors and advisors to strengthen their role in the wider corporate communication activities of their clients by discussing the use of APMs both for the documents in which they have an active role and for other corporate reporting activities. Regarding the latter, we point especially to the Q4 press release that is often issued some weeks before the audited financial statements are published. This Q4 press release contains also information for the whole financial year that is released for the first time to the financial markets and is considered to be highly value relevant (Chambers and Penman 1984; Marseille and Vergoossen 2005; Neuhierl et al. 2013). 2.1. Forthcoming IFRS 18 As mentioned earlier, one of the key concepts introduced by IFRS 18 is the introduction of so-called management-defined performance measures (MPMs). IFRS 18 requires entities to disclose information to help users of financial statements to understand the aspects of financial performance that are communicated by means of a MPM measure and how the MPM measure compares with the measures defined by IFRS standards. MPMs are defined by IFRS 18 as a subtotal of income and expenses that an entity uses in public communications outside financial statements to communicate management’s view of an aspect of the financial performance of the entity as a whole to users.5 This definition, hence, specifically excludes subtotals required by an IFRS accounting standard, including newly to be introduced subtotals from IFRS 18 itself. It should also be noted that the scope of the MPM definition is limited to a subtotal of income and expenses, while ESMA’s APM definition also refers to the financial position and to cash flows. The introduced disclosure requirements for MPMs should be presented in a single note in the financial statements. If an entity also discloses other information in that note, the information in the note shall be labelled in a way that clearly distinguishes the required MPM-disclosures from the other information. In the context of this study, it is relevant to understand the meaning of ‘public communications’ as described in Maandblad voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie 99(5): 255–268 https://mab-online.nl 257 IFRS 18.6 Public communication includes management commentary, press releases and investor presentations but excludes oral communications, written transcripts of oral communications and social media posts. Despite this latter exclusion, the scope can be considered broad and includes in any case the Q4 press release of results but also the investor presentation deck in which the results are often summarized. It should be noted that the public communications referenced to in IFRS 18 are not governed itself by IFRS 18. However, here the ‘soft law’ of the market authorities (AFM, ESMA, SEC) takes over and creates another layer of rules that should be adhered to if the listed companies fall under the supervision of these authorities. As part of this study we will also include annual result press releases (the release of the Q4 results and the full reporting year) in our research and the adherence to the APM disclosure requirements in these releases. In this regard we will also investigate the period between the date of the annual result press release and the date of publication of the audited financial statements. Additionally our expectation is that the (vast) majority of the press releases include unaudited financial information which is further investigated in section 4.4 of this article. 3. Sample The sample of this study consists of European listed companies. The population has been derived from the STOXX Europe 600 index.7 From this listing we removed: • firms operating in the real estate investment sector because of specific sector reporting requirements such as specific APMs requested by the European Public Real Estate Association (EPRA) for real estate entities; • companies within the financial sector due to the distinct nature of their financial performance metrics; • companies from the United Kingdom (UK) since they are no longer subject to ESMA supervision; • companies which had a group relationship with other companies within the sample in which case only the parent company of the group was selected; • companies for which the press release for the 2024 results or the financial statements of the reporting year 2024 were not available by 30 April 2025. Subsequently, the 125 largest companies based on revenues were selected. In Table 1, the descriptive statistics of the sample are presented. 4. Empirical research 4.1. Alternative performance measurements disclosure quality construct We developed a self-constructed disclosure index to capture the quality of APM disclosures. The overall alternative performance measurement disclosure quality (APMDQ) construct is determined by the ESMA APM disclosure guidelines (Appendix 2). In this study the construct APMDQ is based on five of the seven principles of the ESMA guidance (ESMA 2015): Presentation, Reconciliations, Explanations on use, Prominence, and Comparatives. The principle consistency is excluded as this study focuses solely on the 2024 press release and financial statement (management report) information and no longitudinal information is captured. The principle compliance through reference8 is not captured as a separate quality indicator but if a reference to another document was made, the APMDQ assessment was based on the documents (original and referred to) together. The APMDQ construct is determined based on the following formula. In this formula, ni represents the number of APMs disclosed by firm i, and principle kj denotes the k-th of five disclosure quality principles (APMDQ) assessed for each APMj. The data collection process consisted of a two-step approach. In the first step, APMs were identified based on the first page of the press releases and the first page of the management reports9 for each company. We considered that the first page typically highlights the most important metrics and hence captures the most important APMs. We chose to limit the scope of the APM identification process to solely financial performance measures and excluded non-financial performance measures (such as order book information or customer satisfaction scores) because we considered that several APM principles are less relevant for the non-financial performance measure categories Table 1. Descriptive statistics of the population.* Revenues (× €1.000) Communication Consumer*Energy Health care Industrials Information technology Materials Utilities Total Average 29.702.139 48.330.398 102.109.106 22.206.184 21.671.424 16.446.937 22.165.591 45.189.000 32.632.103 Median 11.708.352 19.390.000 91.214.000 18.021.000 11.098.400 18.194.500 12.112.911 44.715.500 17.026.000 Minimum 4.353.201 193.527 56.713.000 2.627.939 988.875 472.074 3.833.500 3.548.000 193.527 Maximum 115.769.000 324.656.000 198.253.558 65.485.936 84.186.000 34.176.000 65.260.000 80.119.000 324.656.000 Standard deviation 35.434.099 68.606.047 50.186.235 19.247.301 22.166.132 10.398.895 20.130.579 26.499.480 43.931.461 N 8 30 517 37 10 12 6125 * The industry Consumer is tabulated from the STOXX 600 Europe 600 index industries consumer discretionary and consumer staples https://mab-online.nl Roy van Duuren, Ralph ter Hoeven: Alternative performance measures’ disclosure quality258 (such as the principles Reconciliations and Prominence). Furthermore, we excluded alternative performance measures related to disaggregated financial information.10 In the second step we scored each individually identified APM against the five disclosure principles of the alternative performance measurements construct. 4.2. Disclosure index In this section we discuss the disclosure quality of APMs for the population divided in four subsections. Firstly, we discuss the overall quality derived from the disclosure index quality disaggregated per sector and per reporting principle (section 4.2.1). Secondly, we analyse the average number of identified APMs, nature of the APMs and use of compliance through referencing (section 4.2.2). Thirdly, we compare disclosure quality between press releases and management reports (section 4.3). Lastly, we reflect on the external auditors’ role related to press releases (section 4.4). 4.2.1. Overall disclosure quality From our empirical data (Table 2) we observe the average overall disclosure quality is 70% with relative high dispersion across the population (standard deviation of 19%). Particularly, the information technology sector stands out positively with an average score of 91% whilst the lowest average score (61%) was identified across the utilities sector. Table 3 depicts the relative score per reporting principle. In the next part of this section, we provide additional normative observations from our empirical studies structured per reporting principle. We provide further reflections on differences between the press release and the management report in section 4.3 of the study. Presentation We observe the reporting principle presentation had an average score of 84%. Hence, generally APMs are accompanied with definitions in a clear and readable way and are meaningful (i.e. not misleading). In this respect we note this meaningful criterion is more judgmental. Based on the ESMA (2015) guidance11 particularly non-recurring (adjusting) items should not be misleading. To operationalize this reporting principle our study evaluated whether the APM is clearly defined and understandable (not misleading) rather than a specific evaluation of the presented individual non-recurring (adjusting) items.12 From our empirical assessment of the data, we, however, did observe a frequent use of non-recurring items such as restructuring items and/or impairment losses for which the APM figures are adjusted. An interesting area for further research would be to further investigate the specific nature of non-recurring (adjusting) items and specifically assess whether APM labels are not overly optimistic or positive (as set forth in paragraph 22 of the ESMA (2015) guidance. We further refer to section 5 of this research. We compared our results against earlier research by the ESMA (2019) based on 2018 data from ad-hoc disclosures13 and the management report. The results based on the management report reveal that 41% of the companies disclosed definitions for all of their APMs, 37% disclosed most of the definitions for APMs used, 13% disclosed definitions for less than half of the APMs and 9% of the companies provided no definitions. The results for the adhoc disclosures are respectively 37%, 30%, 9% and 24%. Albeit the ESMA (2019) results are presented by means of different buckets and the scope of the study may not be directly comparable, our results (average score of 84%) may indicate a (slight) improvement in overall disclosure quality. Furthermore, based on our empirical data only 2 companies (2%) had an overall disclosure quality of 0% on the presentation criteria across all of the identified APMs compared against the results of ESMA (2019) of 9% and 24% respectively for the management report and ad-hoc disclosures. In 62 instances (50%) of the instances we found that companies appropriately presented the APM for all of the APMs, compared against the results of the ESMA (2019) of 41% (management report) and 37% (ad-hoc disclosures), indicative of improvements in overall quality. Table 2. Disclosure index quality APMs per sector. Relative score Communication Consumer Energy Health care Industrials Information technology Materials Utilities Total Average 70% 65% 77% 73% 67% 91% 72% 61% 70% Median 75% 66% 90% 78% 69% 94% 74% 60% 71% Minimum 32% 26% 40% 8% 23% 73% 49% 46% 8% Maximum 94% 100% 97% 98% 100% 100% 94% 78% 100% Standard deviation 23% 20% 24% 24% 16% 10% 16% 12% 19% N 8 30 517 37 10 12 6125 Table 3. Disclosure index quality per APM principle. Relative score Press release Management report Total Presentation 72% 94% 84% Reconciliations 54% 81% 68% Explanations on the use 43% 57% 50% Prominence 51% 69% 60% Comparatives 87% 95% 91% Maandblad voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie 99(5): 255–268 https://mab-online.nl 259 Reconciliations An average score of 68% was identified in relation to the reporting principle reconciliations. Consistent with the findings of the thematic review of the AFM (AFM 2024) we found that reconciliations are not always provided or reconciling items are not identified or explained. Our study did identify several good practices which include the press release of Nokia. Nokia presents next to GAAP figures (referenced to as ‘reported’ figures) also nonGAAP figures (referenced to as ‘comparable’ figures) which are intended to reflect the underlying business performance by excluding certain items of income and expenses. Nokia (Figure 1) included a separate section on APMs and included a reconciliation at the income statement account level between their non-GAAP (‘comparable’) and GAAP (‘reported’) figures. We consider this detailed breakdown to provide valuable insights and enable users to evaluate the reliability and appropriateness of the adjustments made.14 ESMA (2019) found that 50% of the companies disclosed reconciliations for all APMs (ad-hoc disclosures: 41%) and 12% of the companies disclosed no reconciliations for all of the APMs (ad-hoc disclosures: 21%). In our sample, 25% of the companies disclosed reconciliations for all the identified APMs and 6% of the companies provided no reconciliations for all the APMs. Based on our results more mixed results are found at a company level meaning that companies provide both APMs which comply with the reconciliation principle and APMs for which no reconciliations are provided. Explanation on the use The reporting principle explanation on the use shows the lowest average score (50%) meaning that for half of the observations no clear explanation on the use was found. From the empirical assessment of the data we observed that companies frequently provide definitions for the APMs adopted (e.g. as part of a glossary) however they do not provide a specific explanation on the use of the APM or provide a generic explanation on the use. In line with the reporting principle reconciliations, a best practice example was identified in the press release of Nokia. As can be evidenced from Figure 2, Nokia provides clear additional guidance on APMs in their press release by means of a separate paragraph. Next to the definitions provided, Nokia included additional explanations on the purpose of the use of the alternative performance measure. Although we observe the explanations provided by Nokia why the APMs are useful (additional to GAAP measures) can be even more specific, we find the tabular presentation and clear distinction between definition and purpose to be a best practice example. Figure 1. Nokia press release, p 34. Figure 2. Nokia press release, p 33. https://mab-online.nl Roy van Duuren, Ralph ter Hoeven: Alternative performance measures’ disclosure quality260 ESMA (2019) found that 34% of the companies disclosed explanations for all APMs (ad-hoc disclosures: 35%) and 23% of the companies disclosed no reconciliations for all of the APMs (ad-hoc disclosures: 38%). A slightly lower scored was identified by the AFM (2024) across a sample of Dutch companies (23%). In our sample, 27% of the companies disclosed explanations on the use for all the identified APMs and 30% of the companies disclosed no explanation on the use for all the APMs. Hence, our results are relatively in line with earlier observations from the ESMA (2019) and the AFM (2024) and there is no indication of a (significant) improvement or deterioration of the explanation on the use principle. Prominence For the majority of the identified APMs (60%) no more prominence is given to the APM than the closest IFRS figure. Typically, we observe press releases are presented by means of a number of bullets in which the key results are presented. To objectively assess the prominence criteria we concluded a violation to the reporting principle prominence would arise if an APM is presented as part of the bullets presenting the key results whilst the closest IFRS figure is not presented in this key result section. As part of our study also several best practices were identified in which companies clearly made a distinction between IFRS and non-IFRS figures. An example contains the press release of DSM Firminech (Figure 3). In our view this press release stood out positively due to the non-IFRS figures displayed with no more prominence, emphasis or authority than the IFRS figure. Furthermore the company made a clear distinction between IFRS and non-IFRS figures so that users clearly understand what figures constitute the APM. Our study also revealed that in 40% of the instances non-IFRS figures were provided with more prominence than the closest IFRS figure which means there is room for improvement in this area. ESMA (2019) found that in 66% of the APMs in the management report were disclosed with no more prominence that the comparing IFRS figures (ad-hoc disclosures: 61%). These results are comparable to our observations (60%). Comparatives In order for an APM to be meaningful it requires to be accompanied with comparing figures. Our study reveals that for the vast majority (91%) companies did provide comparative figures to the APM. As a normative finding we observed that comparatives are frequently provided throughout the press release or management report but not always directly accompanying the APM figure. For the purpose of the operationalization of our disclosure index, we concluded the reporting principle comparatives to be fulfilled if comparatives are provided in the press release or management report but not necessarily directly accompanying the APM figure.15 We are of the opinion that a best practice disclosure however would be to provide accompanying figures directly accompanied with the APM figure, particularly when the APM figure is provided on the first page and the comparative figures provided at a later page. We reiterate and underpin the comment made by the AFM that a good practice for an APM disclosure would be to include an easy-to-analyse table that provides an overview of the APMs used (AFM 2024). ESMA (2019) found that 89% of the companies disclosed APMs in the management report including comparatives for all of the APMs (ad-hoc disclosures: 87%) and 1% of the companies disclosed no comparatives for all of the APMs (ad-hoc disclosures: 5%). The AFM (2024) found that only 41% of the Dutch companies investigated provided comparatives for all the APMs disclosed. In our sample, 57% of the companies disclosed comparatives for all the identified APMs and 0% of the companies provided no comparatives for all of the identified APMs. Interestingly, compared against the ESMA (2019) results, the companies which provided comparatives for all of the APMs significantly declined, indicative of a deterioration of overall disclosure quality. However, this observation should be viewed in the light of the very high (91%) overall score on this reporting principle. An example of a good practice disclosure was found in the press release of Stellantis which provided IFRS and non-GAAP financial figures in tabular form including comparative figures. Figure 3. DSM Firminech press release, P1. Maandblad voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie 99(5): 255–268 https://mab-online.nl 261 4.2.2. Average number, nature of APMs and compliance through referencing In this section we reflect on the average number of APMs identified, the nature of the APMs and whether the company has adopted compliance through referencing. Table 4 shows that on average five APMs were identified on the first page of the press release and the management report. Our conclusion from this observation is that APMs are frequently adopted which underpins the relevance of adhering to the APM guidance. The highest number of APMs identified on the first page of the press release is 11 which is amongst others identified in the press release of Akzo Nobel. In this respect we note that AkzoNobel made use of compliance through referencing by including a specific reference to a note to the condensed financial statements including reconciliation to the closest IFRS figure and explanations on the use. We will discuss the adoption of compliance through reference in the next part of this section. As also pointed out by the AFM (AFM 2024), the use of a high number of APMs increases the risk that issuers do not adhere to the ESMA guidance. Furthermore, 123 out of the 125 issuers in our sample used one or more APMs on the first page of the press release and 121 companies used one or more APMs on the first page of the management report. For all issuers we identified one or more APMs either on the first page of the press release or management report. We furthermore compared the average number of APMs per sector to the average APM disclosure quality and observed the Energy sector (N = 5) on average has the lowest number of APMs and has an above average (77%) APM disclosure quality score. Results should however be cautiously interpreted as the average N per sector is relatively low. Another outlier identified is the relatively high score of the information technology sector (N = 10), however this seems not be explained by an above or below average number of APMs. In order to gain a better understanding of the nature of the APMs we grouped the APMs into the following categories: profit-related APMs, revenue-related APMs, cashflow-related APMs and others. As evidenced in table 5, we found that by far profit-related APMs are most frequently identified (54%), followed by cashflow-related APMs (20%). This observation is not surprising as our expectation has been that companies often apply alternative performance measures such as ‘Adjusted EBITDA’, ‘Core earnings’ or other measures for the profitability. We also identified 10 instances in which companies disclosed a change in one or more of their APMs, or disclosed the introduction of a new APM. As explained in section 3, the reporting principle consistency has been excluded from the scope of our disclosure index. Nevertheless, we did identify a good practice disclosure from one of the companies. In their 2024 press release Equinor disclosed an amendment to their adjusted operating income calculation. In accordance with the ESMA guidance16 Equinor disclosed the change, including reasons for the change, and provided restated figures. As a good practice, Equinor included in their press release a tabular presentation of the impact of the change on the comparative figures disaggregated to the reporting segments affected (Figure 5). As evidenced in Table 6, in 29 instances (23% of sample) compliance by reference was applied. This either related to specific references from the press release to the annual report or a company website or a specific reference included in the annual report to the company website. We observed that compliance by reference in the press release is typically applied to comply with Figure 4. Stellantis press release, p 1. Table 4. Average number of APMs. Average number of APMs Communication Consumer Energy Health care Industrials Information technology Materials Utilities Total Press release 7 4 4 5 5 5 6 5 5 Management report 5 5 3 6 5 5 6 6 5 Combined 12 9 7 11 10 10 12 11 10 Disclosure quality Average APMDQ 70% 65% 77% 73% 67% 91% 72% 61% 70% https://mab-online.nl Roy van Duuren, Ralph ter Hoeven: Alternative performance measures’ disclosure quality262 the reporting criteria definitions and explanation on the use for which is referenced to the annual report (either 2024 or comparing period 2023) or the company website. ESMA (2015) requires references to be readily and easily accessible to users. References made should direct users to the information required by the ESMA guidelines such as direct hyperlinks into the documents where the information may be accessed.17 The use of hyperlinks in the press release or management report was identified in 12 instances which is 52% of the companies applying compliance through reference. A good practice of compliance through reference is found in the press release of Straumann Group which includes specific reference to the annual report including specific page numbering. Table 5. Nature of identified APMs (due to rounding, total does not add up to 100%). Description of APM Frequency observed % of APMs identified Profit-related APMs 650 54 Revenue-related APMs 135 11 Cash flow-related APMs 237 20 Other financial performance measures 189 16 Table 6. Use of compliance by reference. Relative score Total Compliance by reference 29 N 125 In % 23% Figure 5. Equinor press release, p 39. Maandblad voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie 99(5): 255–268 https://mab-online.nl 263 4.3. Press release and management report information In line with our expectations, we observe a significant deviation in disclosure quality in press releases compared to management reports. As set forth in Table 7, an average score of 80% was realized across the five principles for APMs identified in the management report whilst only a score of 58% was realized in the press releases.18 The variation in quality between issuers was also significantly higher for the press release (standard deviation of 29%) versus the management report (standard deviation 19%). We believe this finding is troublesome because users of financial information typically rely on information in press releases as the first release of the results of the previous quarter and the reporting year. We refer to the end of section 2 of this study. In section 4.4, we provide further reflection on the external auditors’ role in the press release and the timing of the press release and the auditors’ opinion. 4.4. External auditors’ role in press releases As evidenced in Table 7, the quality of APM disclosures in press releases is significantly lower than the quality of APM disclosures in management reports. As part of our study, we investigated whether the GAAP financial information included in the press release has been audited or unaudited or whether this information has not been disclosed at all (Table 8). We find that in almost half of the observations (47%) no information is disclosed whether the financial information is audited or not. We deem these results disappointing as this means that in almost half of the cases users of the press releases are uninformed on whether the financial figures have been subject to an external audit. In 32% of the instances companies specified the financial figures are unaudited and in only 8% of the instances it is specified that the financial figures are audited. This low percentage is likely a result of the press release being issued prior to the completion of the audit of the financial statements to which we will further reflect in the next part. In 16 instances (13%) the company explained in the press release that the audit procedures regarding the consolidated financial statements have been completed or substantially completed and that the auditor19 is in the process of issuing the audit report.20 In our opinion this is an interesting statement given its inherent message that there will be no material audit differences affecting the financial statements which include differences in relation to subsequent events that could lead to an adjustment of the financial results until the date of authorization for issue of these statements.21 From a Dutch perspective we further refer to the NBA practice statement 1128 (NBA Handreiking 1128) which sets out the involvement of the auditor in relation to the press release. In this respect also the Dutch Corporate Governance code is relevant. The Dutch Corporate Governance Code explains that the audit committee assesses whether, and if so, how, the external auditor is involved in the content of the publication of financial reports other than the financial statements (Dutch Corporate Governance Code 2025). For the Dutch companies in the population (10 companies), Table 8 shows that 1 (10%) company discloses audited financial information in the press release, 7 (70%) disclose unaudited financial information in the press release, and 2 (20%) do not disclose whether the presented financial data have been audited. We therefore conclude that most of the companies (80%) adhere to the recommendation set forth in the NBA practice statement 1128 to inform users whether the press release included audited financial figures or not. In order to evaluate the implication of the significant difference in disclosure quality between the press release and management report as set forth before, we have analysed the timing difference between the press release and the auditors’ report to the financial statements. Table 9 depicts the reporting gap between the Q4 press release and the auditors’ opinion accompanying the financial statements 2024. In applying the auditors’ opinion date, we assumed this is often the timing at which the financial statements are authorized for issue (or shortly after) which date should be disclosed according to IAS 1022. For almost half of the population (46%) the auditors’ opinion accompanying the 2024 financial statements was issued before or on the same date of the press release. This observation is relevant because the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) considered in the development of IFRS 18 that in most jurisdictions entities issue the public communications (such as press releases) before or on the same day as the financial statements are authorized for issue however sometimes public communications might not be available until after the financial statements are authorized for issue. Our observations show that in the majority (54%) of the cases the public communication has been before the auditors’ opinion. This outcome is in line with the study Table 7. Disclosure index quality press release and management report. Relative score Press release Management report Total Average 58% 80% 70% Minimum 0% 0% 0% Maximum 100% 100% 100% Standard deviation 29% 19% 19% N123 121 125 Table 8. Assurance press release information. Full population Dutch companies N % N % Financial figures audited 10 8 1 10 Financial figures unaudited 41 33 770 Audit (substantially) completed however auditors’ report not yet issued 16 13 0 0 Undisclosed 58 46 220 Total 125 100 10 100