The Long Clock · Chapter Eight

The Quarterly Question

Ammanuel Santa Anna · ORCID 0009-0008-3244-0306

Chapter Eight of The Long Clock: Purpose, Patient Capital and the Time a Company Needs.

Abstract

On 5 February 2009, in the depth of the financial crisis, Unilever published its results for the previous year. Its new chief executive, Paul Polman, had been in the post a few weeks. The statement carried a sentence that, in the language of results statements, was unusually blunt: "Given the current economic uncertainty I believe it would be inappropriate at this stage to provide an outlook specifically for 2009 or to reaffirm the 2010 targets." He added that he was confident in the underlying strength of the business and expected, "over the longer term," to deliver "very competitive levels of growth and margin improvement." The sentence has since been retold as the moment one of the largest consumer-goods companies in the world stopped playing the quarterly game. In the retellings, Polman abolished earnings guidance and quarterly reporting on his first day and told short-term investors to take their money elsewhere. Some of that may be so; the retellings come from interviews and features, not from the company's filings, and the house has not found the primary record of each claim.

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Santa Anna, A. (2026). The Quarterly Question. In The Long Clock. Luminous Prosperity Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23989088

@incollection{santaanna2026the8,
  author    = {Santa Anna, Ammanuel},
  title     = {The Quarterly Question},
  booktitle = {The Long Clock},
  chapter   = {8},
  publisher = {Luminous Prosperity Inc.},
  year      = {2026},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.23989088},
  url       = {https://business.hautelumiere.life/library/the-long-clock/08-the-quarterly-question/}
}

References

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  2. Houston, J. F., Lev, B., & Tucker, J. W. (2010). To guide or not to guide? Causes and consequences of stopping quarterly earnings guidance. Contemporary Accounting Research, 27(1), 143–185. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1911-3846.2010.01005.x
  3. Chen, S., Matsumoto, D., & Rajgopal, S. (2011). Is silence golden? An empirical analysis of firms that stop giving quarterly earnings guidance. Journal of Accounting and Economics, 51(1–2), 134–150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacceco.2010.10.006
  4. García Osma, B., Guillamón Saorín, E., & Mercado, F. (2023). Quarterly earnings guidance and real earnings management. Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, 50, 1029–1059 (online December 2022). https://doi.org/10.1111/jbfa.12683

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  1. Chapter OneTwo Sentencesdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989074
  2. Chapter TwoThe Company Was Chartered for Somethingdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989076
  3. Chapter ThreeFour Objections, Answered Plainlydoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989078
  4. Chapter FourTwo Clocks in Every Companydoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989080
  5. Chapter FiveWhen the Clock Lengthensdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989082
  6. Chapter SixThe Foundation and the Trustdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989084
  7. Chapter SevenHanding It Ondoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989086
  8. Chapter EightThe Quarterly Questiondoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989088
  9. Chapter NineThe Field Manualdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989090
  10. Chapter TenHow to Know It Workeddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989092
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  12. Chapter TwelveA Household on the Long Clockdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989096
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The licence

Free to read, share, quote, translate and teach, non-commercially, for ever, under the Luminous Library Licence 1.0. Every other right is the Author’s. Deposited on Zenodo in the Luminous Prosperity community.