Management Discussion and Analysis - MD&A

In public companies, there is almost always a quarterly conference call when "management" (usually the CEO and the CFO) hops on the phone for an intimate chat with 142 or more of their bestest friends from Wall Street. Those 142-ish (or way more for big companies like Apple) comprise sellside analysts, buyside analysts, and portfolio managers, the press, politically motivated people, and vendors and/or friends (and/or enemies) of the company. On that call, management basically just runs through the numbers and operations, giving an update as to how well or poorly the company ran the lap the last 13 weeks. And then the stock reacts, for better or worse.

See: 10Q. See: 10K. See: 8K. See: Annual Report.