MD&A

MD&A, short for management's discussion and analysis, is a section of a company's 10-K and 10-Q filings where management explains, in their own words, what drove the numbers for the period. It is where a company's leadership can add context that raw financial statements alone cannot provide.

Because it is written by management rather than being a strictly standardized table of numbers, MD&A is useful for understanding a company's own explanation of its results, but it should be read alongside the actual financial statements rather than taken entirely at face value.