Forward-looking statement

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In United States business law, a forward-looking statement is a statement that cannot sustain itself as merely a historical fact. A forward-looking statement predicts, projects, or uses future events as expectations or possibilities.

1 United States law
- 1.1 Linguistic perspective
2 See also
3 Other links
4 Notes
5 Reference

[edit] United States law

Under U.S. law, section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, businesses must comply to standards of communication that limit risk factors. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a "safe harbor" for certain forward-looking statements. Businesses usually include a form of a disclaimer that states that any instance of a forward-looking statement found in their material is only true at the time it was written, and they further claim that they are under no obligation to update such written statements if conditions change or that unexpected occurrences happen to affect the statement afterwords. Such forward-looking statements, however, must be identifiable by the use of certain prescribed words.

[edit] Linguistic perspective

Sentences and phrases are forward-looking statements when they include any tense from present to future or similar inflection. Words, such as "believe," "estimate," "anticipate," "plan," "predict," "may," "hope," "can," "will," "should," "expect," "intend," "is designed to," "with the intent," "potential," the negative of these words or such other variations thereon or comparable terminology, may indicate forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that a statement is not forward looking.