McDonald’s reported revenues, and what a Form 10-K guarantees

A Form 10-K is filed under statute. Its financial statements are audited, its officers certify it personally, and material misstatements expose both the company and those officers to enforcement action. It also has a prescribed structure: business description, risk factors, management’s discussion, the statements themselves, and the notes.

Two consequences matter for a reference desk. First, the numbers can be relied on to a degree nothing else on this site can match. Second, the document says what it does not know: risk factors and contingencies are stated because the law requires disclosure of uncertainty, which is the opposite of how estimate-driven writing works.

That combination (audited figures plus declared uncertainty) is the standard this site holds every other kind of source against. Most fail it, which is why so many pages here end with a documented range or an absence.

Every filing is available through the regulator’s own electronic system, indexed by company and by form type, free of charge and without an account. That means every figure on this page can be checked by a reader in a few minutes: the test this site applies to itself.

The same system holds the insider transaction reports covered on the Form 4 page, which are the closest thing in existence to a public record of an individual’s holdings, and even they cover only company stock.