Check out the Excel version of the 10-Q report for Tesla, generated by Morningstar Research software [1]. Lots of merged cells, with some column labels appearing one column adjacent from the data it's describing. And you still need the HTML/PDF version because the Excel includes only the numbers, and not things like risk disclosure or management's comments about the earnings.
As 'structured data' goes, it's nowhere near where it needs to be to support 'instant article generation' beyond anything but the shallowest headline numbers. The consolidated financial statements all have appendices (notes) with relevant details. The case study you linked to simply indicates only that reduced man-hours significantly by automating the process of manually picking numbers and putting them into an article template. They may as well be putting out a press release.
Although the topic of the post is how automation affects financial journalism, it bears mentioning that an analysts' job is to reverse engineer the report to see how they arrived at those numbers. The vendors' auto-generated reports never include formulas, so you'll have to be doing your own calculations as part of your due diligence.
For instance, if they're trading at a high P/E ratio, how much of that is due to positive investor sentiment and not related to recent buybacks? The headline numbers won't reveal that, but past data and the notes to the financial statements usually will.
If their cash balance says $x billion, how much of that came from convertible bond issues that are coming due in the next 12 months?
As 'structured data' goes, it's nowhere near where it needs to be to support 'instant article generation' beyond anything but the shallowest headline numbers. The consolidated financial statements all have appendices (notes) with relevant details. The case study you linked to simply indicates only that reduced man-hours significantly by automating the process of manually picking numbers and putting them into an article template. They may as well be putting out a press release.
Although the topic of the post is how automation affects financial journalism, it bears mentioning that an analysts' job is to reverse engineer the report to see how they arrived at those numbers. The vendors' auto-generated reports never include formulas, so you'll have to be doing your own calculations as part of your due diligence.
For instance, if they're trading at a high P/E ratio, how much of that is due to positive investor sentiment and not related to recent buybacks? The headline numbers won't reveal that, but past data and the notes to the financial statements usually will.
If their cash balance says $x billion, how much of that came from convertible bond issues that are coming due in the next 12 months?
[1]http://ir.tesla.com/sec-filings?field_nir_sec_form_group_tar...