Limited Review

Limited Review can be defined as the audit of financial statements on quarterly basis. Listed companies are required to conduct limited review through statutory auditors before submitting it to SEBI and before publishing unaudited financial statements in newspaper. Every listed co. under clause 41 of the listing agreement is required to furnish the unaudited quarterly result in quarterly manner in the prescribed format to the concerned stock exchange where the co. is listed within 45 days of the end of respective quarter. The co. shall intimate to the Stock Exchange within 15 minutes of the closure of board meeting in which unaudited/ audited financial statements are placed. Further co. has to publish its financial statements in one english newspaper and one regional language newspaper within 48 hours of board meeting. Following are the provisions regarding limited review:-

1. The Board of Directors or its sub-committee should take on record the unaudited/audited quarterly results, which shall be signed by Managing Director/Director. The Audit Committee which comprises mostly of independent directors need to review the results before the same is taken up by the board.

2. The company shall inform the Stock Exchange where its securities are listed about the date of the Board Meeting at least 7 days in advance and shall also issue immediately a press release in at least one national English newspaper and one regional language newspaper about the date of the aforesaid Board or its sub-committee meeting

3. The company will furnish segment wise revenue, results and capital employed along with the quarterly unaudited financial results with effect from quarters ending on or after September 30, 2001 as per the prescribed format.

4. In case of change of name of the company, the new activity of business, turnover and the income from the said new activity shall be separately disclosed for a period of three years from the date of such change.

5. The quarterly report should be prepared on the basis of accrual accounting policy and in accordance with the uniform accounting practices adopted for all quarters.

6. Where the company opts to furnish unaudited financial results, there is a provision to provide explanation for variation between items of unaudited and audited quarterly/year to date/annual results if such variation exceeds a particular limit. This provision has been simplified in the revised clause 41. Accordingly, now the listed companies are required to provide explanation for variation between items of unaudited and audited quarterly/year to date/annual results only in respect of net profit or loss after Tax and for exceptional/extraordinary items instead of providing explanation for variation in any of the items in the proforma as exited earlier. Further, the regulator has mandated that such variation should not be more than 10% or Rs. 10 lakh whichever is higher in place of earlier stipulation of 20% or more.

7. The company will have the option to publish consolidated quarterly results in addition to the unaudited quarterly results of the parent company.

8. The quarterly unaudited results are subject to limited review by the Statutory Auditors of the company, to be submitted within 45 days from end of the quarter.

9. In respect of the half yearly results, if the company intimates in advance to the Stock Exchange/s that it will publish audited half yearly financial results within two months of the close of the half year then in such a case unaudited results and limited review need not be published/given to the stock exchange/s.

10. As a part of its audited or unaudited financial results for the half-year, the company shall also submit by way of a note, a statement of assets and liabilities as at the end of the half-year.

11. In respect of results for the last quarter of the financial year, if the company intimates in advance to the stock exchange/s that it will publish audited results within a period of 60 days from the end of the last quarter of the financial year, in such a case unaudited results for the last quarter need not be published/given to the Stock Exchange/s. The intimation of the decision to submit audited results should be send within 45 days from the end of the quarter.

12. However, when a company opts to submit unaudited financial results for the last quarter of the financial year, it shall, submit a statement of assets and liabilities as at the of financial year only along with the audited financial results for the entire financial year, as soon as they are approved by the Board.

13. The manufacturing and trading/services companies which have followed functional (secondary) classification of expenditure in the Annual Profit & Loss Account in their most recent Annual report may furnish results on a quarterly basis in this alternative format.

14. In case the company has subsidiaries and it opts to submit consolidated financial result as mentioned at (e) above, it may submit the consolidated financials as per the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) notified by the International Accounting Standards Board.

15. The company shall ensure that the limited review/audit reports submitted to the stock exchanges on a quarterly/annual basis shall be given only by an auditor who has subjected himself to the peer review process of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and holds a valid certificate issued by the Peer Review Board of the ICAI.