When US Steel released America’s first annual report more than a century ago, it was an admirably trim 40 pages, and mostly photos of smokestacks. Its 2020 annual report clocked in at 162 packed pages — and even this is concise by modern standards. 

Public companies release reams of financial information and insight into their business every quarter, but the annual report is the big blue whale of corporate reporting. These days, the average length is the equivalent to a 240-page novel, according to S&P Global.

It is popular to bemoan that quarterly and annual reports are now word salads, consisting mostly of vast amounts of often useless reporting requirements and standardised legal caveats, and then sprinkled with a big dose of PR guff. The core accounting numbers have not changed meaningfully in quantity and quality over the past century, cynics complain.