In the world of investor relations, offered guidance can entail much more than just communicating earnings-per-share expectations. The “level of nuance in how each organization issues, or does not issue, guidance is considerable,” says a new study by the National Investor Relations Institute.

The “Guidance Practices and Preferences 2012 Survey Report” released this week by NIRI, a professional association of IR professionals, collected data from 2,267 of its corporate members to see what they disclosed, how, and why. It found that even though the “vast majority” of respondents provided some form of guidance, the percentage of those doing so has declined in recent years.

Among the key findings:

88% of 2012 respondents provided some form of guidance (either financial, non-financial or both), compared to 90% in 2010 and 93% in 2009.

Guidance, in any form, varied by market cap. One-quarter of micro-cap respondents do not issue any guidance (financial or broad market), while 100% of mega-caps do issue guidance in one or both forms.

76% of respondents provide financial guidance (earnings, revenue, cash flow, operating income, gross margin, expenses, capital expenditures, and tax rate) compared to 81% in 2010 and 85% in 2009.

Companies with greater analyst coverage were more likely to provide guidance. One-half of companies not covered by sell-side analysts do not provide guidance in any form, while 98% of companies with 20 or more sell-side analysts do so.

44% provided non-financial guidance in 2012, a decrease from 48% in 2010 and 55% in 2009. The most common forms of non-financial guidance were qualitative statements about market conditions, industry-specific information, and market growth forecasts.

The top reasons for reporting non-financial guidance, in order of stated importance, were increasing transparency, ensuring sell-side consensus and reasonable market expectations, reporting a more accurate picture of the company, and attempting to limit stock volatility were. The most notable change from 2010 results was the desire to facilitate Reg. FD compliance; only 9% chose the option in 2010 compared to 20% in 2012.

For those that do not provide any guidance. the majority has never done so and most cited management philosophy as the reason. Conversely, the most common reasons for providing guidance were increasing transparency, and ensuring sell-side consensus and market expectations are reasonable.

The survey also solicited written, open-ended responses from respondents. A sampling:

“The sell side will always push for more and more information. Company management must resist this pressure in setting a guidance policy.”—large-cap mining company, more than 20 analysts.

“I recommend looking at peer practices and also your company's strategy. New products are important for us, so we set forward-looking targets for them as a percentage of sales. Our peers don't disclose that.”—large-cap manufacturing firm, 15-19 analysts.

“I do not believe that guidance is good or bad per se. Some managements may be in an industry to where they don't have a much better ability to forecast earnings than the outside world—in such a case, I certainly wouldn't recommend they try to give guidance. In some other cases, management may be able to forecast but the Street is blind, viewing the company as a black box. In that case, I would certainly advocate providing guidance.”—mid-cap construction company, more than 20 analysts.

“Annual financial guidance is appropriate to provide and update quarterly in order to keep analysts' estimates 'in the ball park.' As for non-financial guidance, that depends entirely on whether the company uses such metrics to develop their internal forecast.”—small-cap real estate company, 5-9 analysts.

“My corporation operates in a highly volatile margin environment that is not conducive to giving earnings guidance. Therefore, we give operational guidance to help analysts' gauge earnings using the highly public prices that we receive for our products.”—large-cap manufacturing company, more than 20 analysts.

“Our arguments on reducing guidance stems from rapid growth. Because our growth has been so much higher than anticipated, shareholders have begun to expect large surprises. Now we are getting better and have more data to analyze, we can get closer to actual estimates.”—small cap retailer, no analyst coverage.