Assessing the “readability” factor: a new look at the annual activity reports of public enterprises

The annual activity report is a key document in the communication between enterprises and interested external users of information. The purpose is to obtain data about the financial situation, the results of the company's activities and the prospects for the company's development. A prerequisite for achieving effectiveness in the communication act is the ease of comprehension of the disclosed textual information. It is essential that it is comprehensive, fair and substantive, presented unambiguously, clearly and accurately so that it is easily perceived and understood by interested users. The aim of this study is to metrify the reasons influencing the readability of the annual activity reports of some Bulgarian public companies. Five quantitative metrics were applied to assess the "readability" factor. As a result of the empirical study, it is found that the annual activity reports: 1) present understandable and clear, important and essential information about the companies' activities; 2) stimulate the reader with short and clear sentences; 3) provide data and figures in tabular form and through graphs to illustrate the text. As a result, external users have to make less effort to process a qualitatively larger amount of information contained in the annual activity reports of Bulgarian public enterprises.