Why Public Companies Prefer News Direct for Press Release Distribution

NewsDirect homepage on laptop screen

Each year, U.S. public companies are required to release several disclosure statements containing financial results, analysis, and outlook, and any significant or material changes therein. The process involves drafting language, collecting financial information, and distributing it over a newswire for broad and simultaneous release.

This typically has the company investor relations (IR) team preparing weeks ahead of time to meet legal obligations, C-suite expectations, and hairy deadlines. Or in the case of a needed unexpected release, scrambling to get the information out in a timely fashion.

News Direct, the first content and news distribution service made for modern media outreach, simplifies these workflows significantly, which is a big part of why public companies prefer News Direct for Press Release Distribution. Here’s a closer look at some of the unique benefits News Direct offers.

First, What Is Required Disclosure? 

Federally mandated public company disclosure was established in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. The Securities Act of 1933 required companies selling securities to the public register with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the primary U.S. securities industry regulator, and provide potential investors with complete and accurate information (including audited financial statements) about the company and its shares. 

Securities law was later augmented with the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 2002 after the unexpected and disastrous bankruptcies of global titans Enron, WorldCom, and others in the early 2000s. The SOX Act significantly expanded public company disclosure requirements and assigned corporate directors and officers extensive oversight responsibilities.

Each year, public companies file several disclosure forms with the SEC, while informing investors (and potential investors) of the same information. SEC Regulation FD requires these groups to be informed fairly and simultaneously, and news releases offer a relatively easy way to achieve compliance.

A Secure Platform 

Press release security is always a stressor when working with outside vendors, especially when pre-market data is involved. An information leak, intentional or not, could amount to a severe violation of securities law.

However, News Direct’s proprietary online platform, helps keep your information secure throughout the end-to-end earnings or press release process. Industry-leading, cloud-based isolation technology ensures individual user environments are protected, with two-factor authentication in place for an added layer of security. Secure collaboration among trusted stakeholders is also available, with flexible active-permissioning for each content piece.

Easy & Efficient Collaboration

For the IR team tasked with crafting press releases, getting the green light from the C-suite on the copy is often the most challenging part. Endlessly chasing down senior staff for input and review while juggling earlier versions and updates can boost anyone’s blood pressure. The opportunity for error and omission is ever present.

News Direct’s Content Studio virtually eliminates these inefficiencies by enabling collaboration within the single workspace platform. Drafting a release is quick and effortless using the in-platform release template, full suite of editing tools (including compliance with AP Stylebook conventions), and comprehensive version tracking.

SimpliFi™ for Painless Tabular Formatting

Each quarter-end (aka earnings season) public company disclosure typically includes extensive financial statements with pages of numbers that are painstakingly formatted, first by the IR or CFO teams and often later by a newswire editor to ensure they fit the newswire release configuration.

News Direct’s proprietary SimpliFi™ functionality revolutionizes this laborious part of the process by enabling busy IROs to copy and paste formatted tabular data directly into the Content Studio without losing its formatting. With SimpliFi™, you can save hours of busy work, reduce the potential for error, and avoid at least a few headaches. You might even look forward to next quarter’s earnings season.

Transparent & Affordable Pricing 

Legacy newswires generally charge for press release distribution based on word count and geographic dissemination一variables that were once time and labor intensive before the digital revolution some 30 years ago. For public companies that need to reach stakeholders across the country, for example, an earnings release can end up costing thousands of dollars or more.

Alternatively, News Direct uses a modern pricing model that reflects how modern media is created and consumed today. News Direct offers asset-based, flat-rate pricing that’s affordable and fully transparent. It’s simple to understand, makes budgeting easier, and doesn’t penalize for word count or distribution reach.

Streamlined Distribution

Distributing a press release through News Direct is also significantly easier and faster than with traditional industry newswires. Rather than spend hours ping ponging messages, edits, and revisions back and forth with a newswire editor, News Direct enables you to control when and where you distribute your release.

You can select your distribution date, time and preferences from the same platform used to create the release. And News Direct offers a premier, global network of financial media agencies, exchanges, trade press, news outlets, and geographic, cultural, and interest-based outlets to consider. When you’re ready to distribute your release, press submit, and you’re done.

Standalone Media Release With Digital Asset Direct™

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words一or a thousand numbers. Citing research data, global business and media company Forbes asserts audiences prefer visual elements over numbers and will better remember the data in a visual format.

News Direct enables IROs to capitalize on this modern consumption preference by distributing media without an adjoining text release. News Direct’s proprietary Digital Asset Direct™ functionality makes it a cinch to disseminate an infographic, video, image, or other data visualization piece on its own. It’s a great addition to your portfolio of investor engagement tactics, and uses the same flat-rate pricing approach as employed for text releases.

Comprehensive Analytics 

For public companies, compliance with Regulation FD’s tenets of fair, broad, and simultaneous distribution can be better measured with robust press release analytics. To this end, News Direct offers industry-first metrics to make performance follow-up a breeze.

Use News Direct’s analytics portal to view results beyond posting stats, such as earned media reporting and detailed visibility and engagement metrics, just to name a few. And every public company distribution includes an Equity Impact Report free of charge. So you can understand in near real time the impact your news has on the market, your business and competitors.

Want to learn more? Schedule a demo with News Direct today!