• Survey shows trend towards better online disclosure
• Fewer companies using hard-to-read formats
• More companies making MD&A and financials easier to use
• PDF still dominant but misuse of format down
• Companies try to engage investors with fancy animations

FEBRUARY 4, 2003 — Public companies are putting more effort into making their online annual reports easier to use and more understandable, according to a new survey of 100 of the world's biggest companies conducted by IRWebReport.com, the leading online investor relations evaluation service.

The survey provides insights into how companies have changed their disclosure practices following corporate scandals in the United States. It is IRWebReport.com's second survey of online annual report publishing practices. The first study was conducted on annual reports published before the collapse of Enron while the second looked at annual reports published in the months after the scandal.

Completed this past December, the latest survey analyzed the website practices of 37 US-based companies, 28 from Europe, 10 from the United Kingdom, 10 from Japan, nine from Canada, and six from Australia. They represent many of the world's best known enterprises, including Coca-Cola, Sony, McDonald's, Microsoft, Toyota, GE and Nokia.

Companies taking online annual reports more seriously
The survey found that most companies are putting extra effort into their annual reports online, with more choosing to publish their financial statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis in easy-to-use HTML instead of harder-to-use formats like PDF.

Thirty-five companies published their MD&As in HTML compared to 29 reported in the first survey. At the same time, 34 of the 100 companies coded their reports' financial statements in HTML, up from 15. Of the 34 companies providing their financial statements in HTML, 25 added value to the statements by linking line items to related notes.

"These practices show that companies are trying to improve the ease with which investors can find, use and understand their financial disclosures," said Dominic Jones, principle of IRWebReport.com. "We expect that more companies will make an effort to produce better online reports in 2003."

Other highlights from the survey include:

• Fewer companies - 29% versus 34% -- are taking the once-common shortcut of publishing only the feature material or a summary of their annual reports in HTML while making the financial statements and MD&A available only in a large PDF file.
• A growing trend among companies is the use of Flash movies and animations as introductions to their reports. Flash introductions were used by 15% of companies, up from just 5% in the previous survey.
• Many reports still suffer from usability problems which make them difficult for investors to read. Almost a third (32% vs. 38%) publish their downloadable reports in one large PDF file, which can take a long time for investors on home computers to download. Some companies (13% vs. 12%) still make it impossible for investors to copy information from their financial statements to use in spreadsheets and other programs.
• More than 40% of companies only provide their latest available annual report online, while 50% post annual reports for two or three years, and just 10% post annual reports for at least the past five years.

About IR Web Report
Online since 2000, IR Web Report is a subscriber-based service that evaluates the investor relations websites of more than 515 companies around the world and advises companies on global best practices.

IR Web Report is fully independent of all IR website design, hosting and content vendors to ensure the impartiality of its rankings and recommendations. Its research is paid for entirely by its public company members.