Corporate Data Providers Opposed to H.R. 4164, Legislation Reducing Transparency for Small Companies

NEW YORK, March 12, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Calcbench, FinDynamics, TagniFi and Thinknum, all providers of corporate financial statement data to individual and institutional investors, today expressed strong opposition to the proposed legislation, H.R. 4164, also called the Small Company Disclosure Simplication Act, introduced by Robert Hurt to the Financial Services Committee. This bill, if passed, would exempt public companies with revenues below $250 million from submitting their financial statement data to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in XBRL format, a data standard that "tags" financial data, making it computer-readable, and therefore more timely and more easily consumed.  Companies falling under that cutoff comprise over 60% of all publicly traded entities. 

The bill would not affect larger companies which would continue to file in XBRL, resulting in different datasets for large companies versus small companies.  The XBRL filing requirement that this bill seeks to change has been in place since 2009; small companies have already been filing in XBRL format for at least two years.

"40% of investors are using XBRL-enabled corporate data on both large and small issuers.  If H.R. 4164 were to pass, this data would no longer be available.  Small data aggregators like ours, that provide inexpensive access to critical, timely data for any consumer of financial data, whether a corporation or an investor, are able to compete because of XBRL data.  Taking that away for most public companies would hurt our customers who have already seen benefits that they simply could not have seen without XBRL," said Pranav Ghai, co-Founder, Calcbench.

"H.R. 4164 is counter to the stated goals of the Financial Services Committee of reducing the burden on small companies," said Ilya Vadeiko, co-Founder, FinDynamics. "If passed, data aggregators like FinDynamics, will simply not collect data for small issuers resulting in these issuers losing the attention of analysts and investors that they have already gained because of their XBRL filings. Note that the financial statements of small XBRL filers are very simple to tag and that process does not add much extra cost to the SEC reporting requirement. Once prepared in XBRL format for the first time (which small filers have been doing since 2011), their reports are easy to update each subsequent period. Everybody will benefit if all public companies continue providing XBRL data."

"I co-founded TagniFi in 2012 to build a high-quality financial database that would be affordable to ordinary investors and app developers.  Before XBRL, neither of these groups could afford access to quality data which can run from $20,000 to over $100,000 per year from traditional sources.  XBRL is critical to delivering a low-cost, high-quality product to all investors, not just institutions," said Chad Sandstedt, co-Founder, TagniFi.

"Thinknum is a collaborative analytical platform, designed to bring corporate data and tools to all investors," said Gregory Ugwe, Founder, Thinknum. "XBRL gives us the ability to level the playing field for public companies so that small companies have the same access to public funds as large companies. Making small companies second class citizens, with less useable data, would mean these issuers would not even get on the radar screen of the investor."

About Calcbench
Founded in 2011, Calcbench is the first company of its kind to fully harness the power of the new government mandated data standard XBRL, yielding an unprecedented direct link into the SEC's corporate financial data repository.  Calcbench's interactive data platform enables finance leaders to access and analyze financial data thoroughly and efficiently.  Our accessible and intuitive platform can aid in better understanding competitor financials, identifying potential risk areas, analyzing trends across industry sectors, or conducting more effective due diligence.  Calcbench is a proud member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board's Taxonomy Advisory Group, and XBRL US. http://www.calcbench.com

About FinDynamics
FinDynamics has developed XBRLAnalyst, an Excel based platform for accessing and analyzing XBRL data of all public companies in the US. It provides a low cost solution for individuals and independent analysts. FinDynamics has eliminated the technical barriers of learning XBRL by serving the data directly in Excel. We also offer free access to the data to all Academic users. http://findynamics.com/

About TagniFi
TagniFi is building a better standardized financial database for leading investment, research and content organizations using a collection process that results in more timely, cleaner and consistent data. For more information on TagniFi, visit www.tagnifi.com.

About Thinknum
Thinknum is a web platform for financial analysis, where users collaborate on investment research with peers from around the world. http://thinknum.com

Links:
TagniFi
Web site: http://www.tagnifi.com
Blog: http://www.tagnifi.com/letter-to-rep-robert-hurt-regarding-proposed-xbrl-exemption/

Calcbench
Web site:  http://www.calcbench.com 
Letter to Congressman Hurt:  http://www.calcbench.com/home/hr4164

Thinknum:  http://thinknum.com

FinDynamics:  http://findynamics.com/

SOURCE Calcbench