A 10-K is the closest thing investors have to looking “under the hood” of a public company. While earnings calls and press releases offer snapshots, the 10-K lays out the full story—how the business makes money, where it struggles, and what risks keep its executives awake at night.
Each year, every U.S. public company must file this report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It includes audited financial statements, management commentary, business descriptions, legal issues, market risks, and footnotes that often reveal the details investors care about most. It’s the document analysts read first when they want to truly understand a company—not just its stock price.
It’s also written with a mix of transparency and accountability. The CEO and CFO must personally sign off on its accuracy, which makes the information inside more reliable than most investor presentations. If you want the “real version” of a company’s story—this is where you find it.
A 10-K matters because it gives traders and investors the most complete, audited, and legally required look at a company’s financial strength and future risks. It’s the foundation for stock research, valuation models, and investment decisions.
A 10-K is the full annual report, while a 10-Q is the shorter quarterly update. A 10-Q is unaudited and focuses on recent performance, while a 10-K includes audited financials, full-year results, risk disclosures, and deep business details.
All 10-K filings are available for free on the SEC’s EDGAR database. Many financial data platforms also pull these filings into their dashboards to make them easier to read, search, and analyze.
Imagine you’re researching Tesla. Instead of relying on headlines or social media, you open its 10-K. Inside, you find exact revenue numbers, segment breakdowns, production risks, battery costs, global expansion details, and even notes about legal issues. In a few minutes, you get a clear and reliable picture of the company’s real performance.
FinFeedAPI’s SEC API lets you access 10-K filings instantly, without digging through EDGAR manually. You can pull the entire filing, extract financial data, or search specific sections like risk factors or management commentary. This is especially useful for analysts, automated research tools, AI agents, and apps that need clean, structured SEC filing data.
