SEC filing glossary

10-K A 10-K is a U.S. public company’s comprehensive, audited annual report — its single most complete disclosure of financial performance, business, and risk. 10-Q A 10-Q is an unaudited quarterly report filed three times a year that keeps a company’s financial story current between annual 10-Ks. 8-K An 8-K is a current report a company files to disclose a material event — earnings, executive changes, mergers, or other news the market needs to know. 20-F A 20-F is the annual report filed by foreign private issuers listed in the U.S. — the international counterpart to the 10-K, often prepared under IFRS. 6-K A 6-K is how foreign private issuers furnish interim and event-driven information to the SEC — roughly the foreign equivalent of a 10-Q or 8-K.

EDGAR EDGAR is the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system — the official database where U.S. public companies file their disclosures. XBRL XBRL is the structured, machine-readable data format inside SEC filings that lets tools extract exact financial figures instead of scraping text. TTM TTM (trailing twelve months) sums a company’s most recent four quarters to give an up-to-date annualized figure between annual reports. Amendment (/A) An amendment — shown with a “/A” suffix like 10-K/A — revises a previously filed report to correct or add information. NT (12b-25) An NT filing (Form 12b-25), shown as “NT 10-K” or “NT 10-Q”, is a notice that a company will miss a report’s deadline — a recognized red flag.

CIK A CIK (Central Index Key) is the unique, permanent number the SEC assigns to every filer — the stable identifier behind a company, even when its ticker changes. Accession number An accession number is the unique identifier the SEC assigns to each individual filing — the key that points to one exact document on EDGAR.