Lesson 4 of 8
The news filing
Caterpillar filed 101 8-Ks in one stretch of its index. The item codes say what each was about, and four of them can end a thesis.
By Javier Sanz
Founder of ValueScreener. Built Ninety Nine, a securities services provider, and sold it to a tier-one global bank; ran operations and internationalization at Alpaca, the brokerage API.
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In one minute
- An 8-K reports a specific event, usually within four business days, and its item codes say what happened before you open it.
- Most 8-Ks are routine: results announcements, annual meeting votes, debt issues.
- Four item codes are different in kind, because they say the accounts themselves may be wrong or that the people responsible for them have changed.
Between the quarterly reports, a company reports specific events on Form 8-K. Each one lists the item numbers it is filed under, and those numbers are the fastest filter in all of EDGAR.
An index of 8-Ks with their item codes tells you what a company has been doing without opening a single document.
Caterpillar's most recent 8-Ks, by item code
- 1 Sep 2026Items 1.01, 2.03, 9.01A material definitive agreement and a direct financial obligation, with exhibits. A debt issue.
- 4 Aug 2026Items 2.02, 7.01, 9.01Results of operations, furnished under Regulation FD, with the press release as an exhibit.
- 11 Jun 2026Items 5.07, 7.01, 9.01Submission of matters to a vote of security holders: the annual meeting results.
- 10 Apr 2026Items 5.02, 9.01Departure or election of a director or principal officer.
The codes worth memorising
Caterpillar's index, read on 16 September 2026, shows 101 8-K filings among its 1,002 most recent submissions. The pattern is the ordinary one: results four times a year under 2.02, the annual meeting under 5.07, debt issues under 1.01 and 2.03.
The four that are not routine
Item 4.02 is the most serious code in the list. It says the company has concluded that previously issued financial statements should no longer be relied upon. Numbers a reader has already used were wrong.
Item 4.01 reports a change of auditor. On its own it is often ordinary, and it becomes serious when the departing auditor's letter says there were disagreements, which the item requires to be disclosed.
Item 5.02 covers the departure or election of directors and principal officers. A chief financial officer leaving without a successor named is a different event from a planned retirement, and the filing usually says which.
Item 1.03 reports bankruptcy or receivership.
This product treats the first two as serious enough to email about and the third as worth surfacing, and it never parses an 8-K for financial data. That is the right division: an item code is a reliable fact about what kind of event occurred, and the document body is prose.
Reading one in ninety seconds
Open the filing. The cover page gives the date of the earliest event reported, which is often days before the filing date. The item headings then appear in numerical order, each with a short block of text.
Most of the substance is usually in an exhibit under Item 9.01: a press release, an agreement, a letter from an auditor. The 8-K body is frequently three sentences pointing at it.
Check yourself
What does an 8-K filed under Item 4.02 report?
- A change of auditor
- That previously issued financial statements should no longer be relied upon
- An amendment to the bylaws
Show the answer
Answer: B.
Item 4.02 is a non-reliance filing. It says numbers already published, and possibly already used, were wrong.An 8-K lists items 2.02, 7.01 and 9.01. What is it most likely to be?
- An acquisition
- A results announcement, furnished with the press release attached
- A change of control
Show the answer
Answer: B.
2.02 is results of operations, 7.01 is a Regulation FD disclosure and 9.01 means an exhibit is attached. That combination is a quarterly earnings release.Why are item codes more reliable than the text of an 8-K for filtering?
- The text is often inaccurate
- The codes are structured metadata with fixed meanings, so they can be filtered exactly, while the body is prose
- The codes are assigned by the SEC after review
Show the answer
Answer: B.
A code says what kind of event occurred. That is why a monitoring system can act on a code and should not try to read financial figures out of the body.Sources
- Form 8-K, for the item numbers and their definitions, and for the general four business day filing requirement.
- Regulation FD, on selective disclosure, which is the basis for Item 7.01.
- Caterpillar Inc. EDGAR submissions index, read 16 September 2026, for the 8-K count within the 1,002 most recent filings and for the item codes and dates of the four filings shown, accessions 0001104659-26-104197, 0000018230-26-000040, 0001104659-26-072929 and 0001104659-26-042062.
What this leaves out
- The item table lists the common codes rather than all of them. Form 8-K carries several more, and the list has been amended over time.
- The four business day deadline has exceptions, including Item 5.02(e) and filings that coincide with a periodic report.
- Caterpillar's 8-K count is from one index read on one day, covering the filings that index returned rather than the company's whole history.
- Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing here is advice about any security.