What does annual report mean?

a. The annual report is a document that public companies have to provide for their shareholders to illustrate their financial condition and their state of operations. Contained in the document one can find, in the first part, a series of photos, graphics which are all explained in an adjacent narrative. These items all chronicle the corporation’s activities during the previous twelve months. The latter part of the annual report usually contains detailed operational and financial information.

After the stock market crash of 1929, the they enacted a legislation making annual reports a regular element in the corporate financial reporting.

Normally, a company’s annual report will contain some or all of these sections:

Financial Highlights, Letter to the Shareholders, Graphics and Photos, Narrative Text, Management\'s Discussion and Analysis, Financial Statements, Notes to Financial Statements, Auditor\'s Report, Summary Financial Data-Corporate Information.

b. The annual report, in case of mutual funds, is a document that gets released every fiscal year, which is made for fund shareholders. It describes certain features of a fund’s financial condition and operations. Mutual fund reports are what can be described as “plain vanilla”, when it comes to presentation, as opposed to corporate annual reports.

These types of reports are a source of multi-year fund data and performance, along with statements of additional information and a fund’s prospectus. Most of the information, however, is quantitative rather it being qualitative, which normally address the mandatory accounting disclosures necessary of mutual funds.