JPMorgan takes to Twitter for earnings release
America’s largest bank, JPMorgan, reported earnings Thursday morning. But it did it in way it hasn’t ever before, with a tweet linking to the full report on its website.
$JPM reports 4Q15 net income of $5.4B; $1.32 EPS on revenue of $23.7B; ROTCE of 11% https://t.co/fd6YicK60w
— J.P. Morgan (@jpmorgan) January 14, 2016
Typically, public-company earnings reports go out to the world via press release through a business-wire service. But fear of hackers and other concerns have banks rethinking how they communicate with investors.
Earnings press releases may sound boring to some, but they are juicy targets for hackers.
“They have early access to information that’s going to potentially make people or lose people a lot of money,” said Chester Wisniewski with the security firm Sophos.
Hackers aren’t the only concern when it comes to earnings reports.
“There have been a number of companies where results have come out too early,” explained Morningstar bank analyst Jim Sinegal. “So companies, especially financial companies, are wanting to take control of that process.”
Banks have already been boosting their security spending to protect themselves from increasingly aggressive and dangerous hackers. And now more and more of them are changing how they share their financial information with the public.
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