SEC Filings Section Extraction API

Q: Can I extract Item 1A Risk Factors from a 10-K filing via API?

Yes. Pass the filing's accession number and item_key=item1a to the content endpoint. The API returns the full Risk Factors section as clean, pre-extracted HTML. For 10-Q filings, use item_key=part2_item1a instead.

Q: How do I find which sections are available in a specific filing?

Call the /items endpoint with the filing's accession number. It returns a JSON array listing every successfully extracted section along with its stable item_key. Use those keys to fetch individual sections from the /content endpoint.

Q: Does the API extract MD&A sections from 10-Q filings?

Yes. For 10-Q filings, the MD&A section uses the item key part1_item2. For 10-K filings, use item7. The /items endpoint confirms which sections were extracted for any given filing.

How this fits the SEC API suite: Use the Real-time SEC Filings API to search by ticker or CIK and collect accession numbers. Use the SEC Filing Documents & Exhibits API to download raw HTML, XBRL, PDF, and exhibit files. Use this API when you need pre-extracted, section-level text — Risk Factors, MD&A, Financial Statements — without any parsing work on your side.

What this API does

This API works on extracted sections inside a filing rather than the filing as a whole. It first enumerates all available sections for a given accession and then returns the HTML for any selected section using its stable item key.

Supported Form Types

10-K — Annual Reports

10-Q — Quarterly Reports

8-K — Current Reports

20-F — Foreign Private Issuers

S-1 — Registration Statements

F-1 — Foreign Registration

Pre-Extracted & Ready — Zero Delay Involved

Every item section is already extracted, cleaned, and stored before you request it. When each filing is published on EDGAR, our engine pre-emptively extracts items from 6 form types and stores the cleaned HTML for every item it successfully extracted items from. The result is instantaneous, sub-second retrieval times across our entire historical database of millions of filings, and eliminates the need to build and maintain your own SEC parsers.

Quick Start — 2-Step Section Extraction

The standard workflow is two calls: first discover which sections are available for a filing, then fetch the one you want.

0 Get the Accession Number

Search by ticker or CIK in the Real-time SEC Filings API to find the filing you want and its accession number.

GET /secfilings?ticker=AAPL
  &formtype=10-K
  &api_key=YOUR_API_KEY

1 List Available Items

Call /items with the accession number to see exactly which sections were successfully extracted. Use this to confirm a section exists before fetching it.

GET /secfilings/
  {accession}/items
  ?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY

2 Fetch the Section

Pass the item_key from step 1 to stream the pre-extracted, cleaned HTML for that section — ready for LLM ingestion or text analytics.

GET /secfilings/
  {accession}/content
  ?item_key={item_key}
  &api_key=YOUR_API_KEY

1. Items Endpoint: List Sections in a Filing

Use the /items endpoint to enumerate every extracted section in a filing. The response returns one row per detected section, along with labels and a stable item_key that can be passed directly into the content endpoint.

GET https://data.businessquant.com/secfilings/{accession}/items?api_key={api_key}

Live Endpoint https://data.businessquant.com/secfilings/0000320193-25-000079/items?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY

Request Parameters

Parameter	Description
accession	Required Path Parameter The accession number of the filing. Obtain from the Real-time SEC Filings API. Format: `0000320193-25-000079`
api_key	Required Your API key for authentication. Format: `api_key=YOUR_API_KEY`

Response Fields

Field	Description
item_sno	Sequential position of the item within the filing.
item_key	The canonical key to pass to the `/content` endpoint to retrieve this section's HTML. Always lowercase (e.g., `item1a`, `item7`).

Tip

Use this endpoint to introspect a filing's section structure, build section menus in your app, or automatically discover which items are available before running bulk extraction jobs. A section that isn't listed here has not been extracted and cannot be retrieved via the content endpoint.

Request — cURL

curl -X GET "https://data.businessquant.com/secfilings/0000320193-25-000079/items?api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

Response — Apple 10-K FY2025 (22 items)

{
    "metadata": {
        "cik": 320193,
        "ticker": "AAPL",
        "companyname": "Apple Inc.",
        "companyname_short": "Apple",
        "accession": "0000320193-25-000079",
        "total_records": 22
    },
    "data": [
        {
            "item_sno": 1,
            "item_key": "item1"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 2,
            "item_key": "item1a"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 3,
            "item_key": "item1b"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 4,
            "item_key": "item1c"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 5,
            "item_key": "item2"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 6,
            "item_key": "item3"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 7,
            "item_key": "item4"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 8,
            "item_key": "item5"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 9,
            "item_key": "item6"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 10,
            "item_key": "item7"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 11,
            "item_key": "item7a"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 12,
            "item_key": "item8"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 13,
            "item_key": "item9"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 14,
            "item_key": "item9a"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 15,
            "item_key": "item9b"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 16,
            "item_key": "item9c"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 17,
            "item_key": "item10"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 18,
            "item_key": "item11"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 19,
            "item_key": "item12"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 20,
            "item_key": "item13"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 21,
            "item_key": "item14"
        },
        {
            "item_sno": 22,
            "item_key": "item15"
        }
    ]
}

2. Content Endpoint: Fetch Section HTML

Use the /content endpoint with a filing accession and item_key to retrieve the HTML for a single extracted section. The response contains only the requested section, making it easier to work with than the full filing document.

GET https://data.businessquant.com/secfilings/{accession}/content?item_key={item_key}&api_key={api_key}

Live Endpoint — Item 1A (Risk Factors) https://data.businessquant.com/secfilings/0000320193-25-000079/content?item_key=item1a&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY

Request Parameters

Parameter	Description
accession	Required Path Parameter The filing's accession number, as returned by the SEC Filings API. Format: `0000320193-25-000079`
item_key	Required The canonical item key as returned by the `/items` endpoint. Always lowercase. 10-K: `item_key=item1a` `item_key=item7` `item_key=item8` 10-Q: `item_key=part1_item2` `item_key=part2_item1a` S-1 / F-1: `item_key=RiskFactors` `item_key=MDA`
api_key	Required Your API key for authentication. Format: `api_key=YOUR_API_KEY`

Response is raw HTML, not JSON

This endpoint returns the cleaned, pre-extracted HTML for the requested section — not a JSON wrapper. The Content-Type header is text/html. Feed it directly into your HTML parser, LLM context window, or text extraction pipeline.

Fetch Item 1A — Risk Factors (10-K)

curl -X GET "https://data.businessquant.com/secfilings/0000320193-25-000079/content?item_key=item1a&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

Fetch Item 7 — MD&A (10-K)

curl -X GET "https://data.businessquant.com/secfilings/0000320193-25-000079/content?item_key=item7&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

Fetch Part 2 Item 1A — Risk Factors (10-Q)

curl -X GET "https://data.businessquant.com/secfilings/0000320193-26-000013/content?item_key=part2_item1a&api_key=YOUR_API_KEY"

Response — Item 1A HTML (truncated)

<div style="margin-top:18pt;padding-left:45pt;text-indent:-45pt;">
  <span style="font-family:'Helvetica';font-size:9pt;font-weight:700;">
    Item 1A.&#160;&#160;Risk Factors
  </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-top:9pt;text-align:justify">
  <span style="font-family:'Helvetica';font-size:9pt;">
    The following summarizes factors that could have a material adverse
    effect on the Company&#8217;s business, reputation, results of
    operations, financial condition and stock price...
  </span>
</div>
<!-- ... full Risk Factors section continues ... -->

Typical Sections in Practice

Common examples include Item 1 (Business), Item 1A (Risk Factors), Item 2 (Properties), Item 7 (MD&A), Item 7A (Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk), and Item 8 (Financial Statements). The exact set of extracted sections depends on the filing form and what is present in that filing, and the items endpoint is the source of truth for what can be retrieved.

Output Format

The items endpoint returns a JSON array in which each object describes one extracted section, including its position, labels, and stable item_key. The content endpoint returns raw HTML containing the requested section's text and related markup.

3. Use Cases

Section-level extraction powers a wide range of research, compliance, and AI workflows that would otherwise require building and maintaining your own EDGAR parsing stack.

Risk Factor Analysis

Track changes in Risk Factor language year-over-year across any issuer or sector. Identify new risk themes, deleted risks, and material expansions in Item 1A disclosures across filing cycles.

MD&A Year-over-Year

Pull Item 7 (MD&A) across consecutive 10-K filings for the same company and run diff-based analysis to detect shifts in management tone, guidance, and disclosed business performance.

LLM & NLP Pipelines

Feed pre-extracted, clean HTML sections directly into LLM context windows or NLP models for summarization, topic modeling, red-flag detection, and sentiment scoring — no parsing required.

Prospectus & S-1 Mining

Extract Risk Factors, Use of Proceeds, and MD&A from S-1 and F-1 registration statements to analyze IPO deal terms, management narratives, and disclosed business models for primary market research.

Compliance Monitoring

Monitor specific sections — cybersecurity (Item 1C), legal proceedings (Item 3), or controls and procedures (Item 9A) — across an issuer universe to track disclosure changes and new regulatory reporting.

Competitive Intelligence

Extract Business (Item 1) and Industry Overview sections from competitors' 10-K and 20-F filings to build structured competitive landscape datasets and track strategic positioning changes.

Financial Statement Extraction

Pull Item 8 (Financial Statements) from annual filings to feed structured financial data into custom models, or retrieve Item 8 from 20-F filings for IFRS-reported international issuers.

Regulatory Event Detection

Monitor 8-K item sections — material cybersecurity incidents (Item 1.05), results of operations (Item 2.02), and departure of officers (Item 5.02) — in near real time as they are published on EDGAR.

4. Supported Items Dictionary

Our engine normalizes messy, filer-specific headings into a canonical item_key dictionary across 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, 20-F, S-1, and F-1. Use these exact lowercase keys when calling the content endpoint. Filers may omit a section if it is not applicable — always verify availability using the /items endpoint first.

Form 10-K (Annual Reports)

Item Code	Item Description
`item1`	Business
`item1a`	Risk Factors
`item1b`	Unresolved Staff Comments
`item1c`	Cybersecurity
`item2`	Properties
`item3`	Legal Proceedings
`item4`	Mine Safety Disclosures
`item5`	Market for Registrant's Common Equity
`item6`	Selected Financial Data
`item7`	Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A)
`item7a`	Quantitative & Qualitative Market Risk
`item8`	Financial Statements and Supplementary Data

Item Code	Item Description
`item9`	Changes in Accountants
`item9a`	Controls and Procedures
`item9b`	Other Information
`item9c`	Disclosure Regarding Foreign Jurisdictions
`item10`	Directors and Corporate Governance
`item11`	Executive Compensation
`item12`	Security Ownership and Beneficial Owners
`item13`	Related Transactions and Independence
`item14`	Principal Accounting Fees
`item15`	Exhibits and Financial Statement Schedules
`item16`	Form 10-K Summary

Form 10-Q (Quarterly Reports)

Item Code	Item Description
`part1_item1`	Financial Statements
`part1_item2`	Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A)
`part1_item3`	Quantitative & Qualitative Market Risk
`part1_item4`	Controls and Procedures
`part2_item1`	Legal Proceedings
`part2_item1a`	Risk Factors

Item Code	Item Description
`part2_item2`	Unregistered Sales of Equity
`part2_item3`	Defaults Upon Senior Securities
`part2_item4`	Mine Safety Disclosures
`part2_item5`	Other Information
`part2_item6`	Exhibits

Form 8-K (Current Reports)

Item Code	Item Description
`Item1_01`	Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement
`Item1_02`	Termination of a Material Definitive Agreement
`Item1_03`	Bankruptcy or Receivership
`Item1_04`	Mine Safety Shutdowns
`Item1_05`	Material Cybersecurity Incidents
`Item2_01`	Completion of Acquisition or Disposition of Assets
`Item2_02`	Results of Operations and Financial Condition
`Item2_03`	Creation of a Direct Financial Obligation
`Item2_04`	Triggering Events
`Item2_05`	Costs Associated with Exit or Disposal
`Item2_06`	Material Impairments
`Item3_01`	Notice of Delisting
`Item3_02`	Unregistered Sales of Equity Securities
`Item3_03`	Material Modifications to Rights of Security Holders
`Item4_01`	Changes in Certifying Accountant
`Item4_02`	Non-Reliance on Previously Issued Financial Statements
`Item5_01`	Changes in Control of Registrant
`Item5_02`	Departure/Election of Directors or Officers

Item Code	Item Description
`Item5_03`	Amendments to Articles of Incorporation
`Item5_04`	Temporary Suspension of Trading
`Item5_05`	Amendments to Code of Ethics
`Item5_06`	Change in Shell Company Status
`Item5_07`	Submission of Matters to a Vote
`Item5_08`	Shareholder Nominations
`Item6_01`	ABS Informational Material
`Item6_02`	Change of Servicer or Trustee
`Item6_03`	Change in Credit Enhancement
`Item6_04`	Failure to Make a Required Distribution
`Item6_05`	Securities Act Updating Disclosure
`Item6_06`	Static Pool
`Item6_10`	Alternative Filings of Asset-Backed Issuers
`Item7_01`	Regulation FD Disclosure
`Item8_01`	Other Events
`Item9_01`	Financial Statements and Exhibits
`Signature`	Signature

Form 20-F (Foreign Private Issuers)

Item Code	Item Description
`Item1`	Identity of Directors, Senior Management
`Item2`	Offer Statistics and Expected Timetable
`Item3`	Key Information
`Item3A`	Selected Financial Data
`Item3B`	Capitalization and Indebtedness
`Item3C`	Reasons for the Offer and Use of Proceeds
`Item3D`	Risk Factors
`Item4`	Information on the Company
`Item4A`	Unresolved Staff Comments
`Item5`	Operating and Financial Review and Prospects (MD&A)
`Item5A`	Operating Results
`Item5B`	Liquidity and Capital Resources
`Item5C`	Research and Development
`Item5D`	Trend Information
`Item5E`	Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements
`Item5F`	Tabular Disclosure of Contractual Obligations
`Item6`	Directors, Senior Management and Employees
`Item7`	Major Shareholders and Related Party Transactions
`Item8`	Financial Information
`Item9`	The Offer and Listing
`Item10`	Additional Information

Item Code	Item Description
`Item11`	Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk
`Item12`	Description of Securities Other Than Equity
`Item13`	Defaults, Dividend Arrearages
`Item14`	Material Modifications to Rights
`Item15`	Controls and Procedures
`Item15T`	Controls and Procedures (Transitional)
`Item16A`	Audit Committee Financial Expert
`Item16B`	Code of Ethics
`Item16C`	Principal Accountant Fees
`Item16D`	Exemptions from Listing Standards
`Item16E`	Purchases of Equity Securities
`Item16F`	Change in Certifying Accountant
`Item16G`	Corporate Governance
`Item16H`	Mine Safety Disclosure
`Item16I`	Foreign Jurisdictions Disclosure
`Item16J`	Insider Trading Policies
`Item16K`	Cybersecurity
`Item17`	Financial Statements
`Item18`	Financial Statements (Alt)
`Item19`	Exhibits

Form S-1 (Domestic Registration Statements)

Item Code	Item Description
`AboutThisProspectus`	About This Prospectus
`ProspectusSummary`	Prospectus Summary
`RiskFactors`	Risk Factors
`ForwardLooking`	Forward-Looking Statements
`UseOfProceeds`	Use of Proceeds
`DividendPolicy`	Dividend Policy
`Capitalization`	Capitalization
`Dilution`	Dilution
`SelectedFinancialData`	Selected Financial Data
`MDA`	Management's Discussion and Analysis
`Business`	Business / Description of Business
`Regulation`	Regulatory Environment / Government Regulation
`IndustryOverview`	Industry Overview
`Properties`	Properties
`LegalProceedings`	Legal Proceedings
`Management`	Directors and Executive Officers
`ExecutiveCompensation`	Executive Compensation

Item Code	Item Description
`SecurityOwnership`	Security Ownership / Principal Shareholders
`RelatedTransactions`	Certain Relationships and Related Transactions
`DescriptionOfCapitalStock`	Description of Capital Stock / Securities
`SharesEligible`	Shares Eligible for Future Sale
`MaterialUSFederalIncomeTax`	Material U.S. Federal Income Tax Consequences
`Underwriting`	Underwriting / Plan of Distribution
`LegalMatters`	Legal Matters
`Experts`	Experts
`AvailableInformation`	Available Information
`FinancialStatements`	Financial Statements
`PartII_OtherExpenses`	Other Expenses of Issuance and Distribution
`PartII_Indemnification`	Indemnification of Directors and Officers
`PartII_RecentSales`	Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities
`PartII_Exhibits`	Exhibits and Financial Statement Schedules
`PartII_Undertakings`	Undertakings
`Signatures`	Signatures

Form F-1 (Foreign Registration Statements)

Item Code	Item Description
`AboutThisProspectus`	About This Prospectus
`ProspectusSummary`	Prospectus Summary
`RiskFactors`	Risk Factors
`ForwardLooking`	Forward-Looking Statements
`UseOfProceeds`	Use of Proceeds
`DividendPolicy`	Dividend Policy
`Capitalization`	Capitalization
`Dilution`	Dilution
`ExchangeRateInfo`	Exchange Rate Information
`SelectedFinancialData`	Selected Financial Data
`MDA`	Management's Discussion and Analysis
`Business`	Business
`IndustryOverview`	Industry Overview
`OurHistory`	Our Corporate History
`OurStrengths`	Our Competitive Strengths
`OurStrategy`	Our Strategy
`OurProducts`	Our Products and Services
`Regulation`	Regulation / PRC Regulations
`Properties`	Properties
`LegalProceedings`	Legal Proceedings
`RelatedPartyTransactions`	Related Party Transactions

Item Code	Item Description
`Management`	Directors and Executive Officers
`ExecutiveCompensation`	Executive Compensation
`SecurityOwnership`	Principal Shareholders / Security Ownership
`CorporateGovernance`	Corporate Governance
`DescriptionOfShareCapital`	Description of Share Capital
`DescriptionOfADS`	Description of American Depositary Shares (ADS)
`SharesEligible`	Shares Eligible for Future Sale
`MaterialTaxConsequences`	Material Tax Considerations
`Underwriting`	Underwriting / Plan of Distribution
`LegalMatters`	Legal Matters
`Experts`	Experts
`ServiceOfProcess`	Enforceability of Civil Liabilities
`AvailableInformation`	Available Information
`FinancialStatements`	Financial Statements
`PartII_OtherExpenses`	Other Expenses of Issuance and Distribution
`PartII_Indemnification`	Indemnification of Directors
`PartII_RecentSales`	Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities
`PartII_Exhibits`	Exhibits
`PartII_Undertakings`	Undertakings
`Signatures`	Signatures

5. Edge Cases & Behaviour Notes

Missing Items & Filer Discretion

Filers do not always report all items in every filing. If an item is not applicable or there were no material changes during the period, the filer may omit it entirely. Always check the /items endpoint first to confirm a section was extracted before calling /content.

Empty Sections and Legacy Filings

Filings submitted before the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) often lack standardized section structures. Certain entity types also routinely omit or retitle standard sections:

Trusts: e.g., STRATS Trust or Sabine Royalty Trust 10-Ks routinely omit the MD&A section or retitle it as "Trustee's Discussion".
Scattered Sections: In rare cases (~1 in 1,000), filers distribute Item 1 or Item 7 non-sequentially across multiple unlinked pages, which complicates extraction boundary detection.

10-Q vs 10-K Item Key Format

10-Q items are prefixed by their Part designation: part1_item2 for Part I MD&A, part2_item1a for Part II Risk Factors. This matches the structure returned by the /items endpoint — use those keys directly without modification.

Filtering by Entity Type for Bulk Pipelines

Before running section extraction across a large universe, use the Stocks Profile API to exclude entity types that do not produce standard narrative sections:

Entities with Security Categories matching ETF, UNIT, or CEF.
Entities with SIC codes 6189 (Asset-Backed Securities) and 6798 (Real Estate Investment Trusts).

Frequently Asked Questions

Which SEC filing types support section extraction?

Section extraction is supported for six filing types: 10-K (annual reports), 10-Q (quarterly reports), 8-K (current reports), 20-F (foreign private issuers), S-1 (domestic registration statements), and F-1 (foreign registration statements).

Can I extract Item 1A Risk Factors from a 10-K filing via API?

Yes. Pass the filing's accession number and item_key=item1a to the content endpoint. The API returns the full Risk Factors section as clean, pre-extracted HTML. For 10-Q filings, use item_key=part2_item1a instead.

How do I find which sections are available in a specific filing?

Call the /items endpoint with the filing's accession number. It returns a JSON array listing every successfully extracted section along with its stable item_key. Use those keys to fetch individual sections from the /content endpoint.

Does the API extract MD&A sections from 10-Q filings?

Yes. For 10-Q filings, the MD&A section uses the item key part1_item2. For 10-K filings, use item7. The /items endpoint confirms which sections were extracted for any given filing.

Is the Section Extraction API free to use?

Yes, the Section Extraction API is free to use. Obtain an API key to start extracting sections from SEC filings immediately.

How this Fits with the SEC Filings API

This page assumes you already have a filing accession. Use Business Quant's real-time SEC Filings API to search filings by ticker, CIK, form type, or date and obtain accession numbers, then pass those accessions into the items and content endpoints documented here.

SEC Filings Section Extraction API

What this API does

Pre-Extracted & Ready — Zero Delay Involved

Quick Start — 2-Step Section Extraction

1. Items Endpoint: List Sections in a Filing

Request Parameters

Response Fields

2. Content Endpoint: Fetch Section HTML

Request Parameters

Response is raw HTML, not JSON

Typical Sections in Practice

Output Format

3. Use Cases

Risk Factor Analysis

MD&A Year-over-Year

LLM & NLP Pipelines

Prospectus & S-1 Mining

Compliance Monitoring

Competitive Intelligence

Financial Statement Extraction

Regulatory Event Detection

4. Supported Items Dictionary

Form 10-K (Annual Reports)

Form 10-Q (Quarterly Reports)

Form 8-K (Current Reports)

Form 20-F (Foreign Private Issuers)

Form S-1 (Domestic Registration Statements)

Form F-1 (Foreign Registration Statements)

5. Edge Cases & Behaviour Notes

Missing Items & Filer Discretion

Empty Sections and Legacy Filings

10-Q vs 10-K Item Key Format

Filtering by Entity Type for Bulk Pipelines

Frequently Asked Questions

Which SEC filing types support section extraction?

Can I extract Item 1A Risk Factors from a 10-K filing via API?

How do I find which sections are available in a specific filing?

Does the API extract MD&A sections from 10-Q filings?

Is the Section Extraction API free to use?

How this Fits with the SEC Filings API

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