SOX 404 is into its third year of application. As of October 2007, the SEC had received a total of 4,051 opinions. Based on these filings, it is clear that a tremendous effort has been made by both the audit industry and the companies to considerably upgrade the quality and reliability of public company financial statement reporting. Even though Year 3 has experienced an injection of new filers, the adverse SOX 404 opinion rate stands at 8.6%, down from 10.3% in Year 2 and 16.9% in Year 1. We expect that the current third year 8.6% rate will increase slightly as lagging and troubled filers submit their assessments. The percentage of adverse disclosures from auditor opinions filed by first-time SOX 404 filers stands at 10.1%, a decrease from Year 2 and Year 1. The percentage of adverse Section 404 filings in Year 3 associated with Financial Restatements has declined significantly to 26.1% in Year 3 from 45.4% in Year 2 and 51.9% in Year 1. The amount of adverse 404 opinions associated with material year-end auditor adjustments has grown to 67% in Year 3.

Source: Audit Analytics
Author: Audit Analytics Trend Reports
Document ID: 2
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