MGT 309: Business Communications:
Company Research
- Introduction
- Company Profiles (ex. MarketLine, Hoovers)
- Articles from Business Magazines (BSP, WSJ)
- Annual Reports
- Industry Analysis (S&P)
- Stock Recommendations (S&P, Morningstar)
- Citation Guides
Business Librarian: Steve Cramer
smcramer@uncg.edu
336-256-0346
AIM & Google Talk: stevebizlib
Text me: send a message to 265010 & start the message with stevebizlib.
Learning goals for today:
- Understand the basics of public v. private companies;
- Understand how that distinction affects your research expectations and options;
- Gain experience using library subscription databases for company and industry research.
1. Introduction on company research
1. Is the company private or public?
Public companies have stock traded on an open market.
- U.S. public companies are required to file financial information with the government (the S.E.C.)
- Therefore, if a company is publicly owned, financial information and other details are easy to find.
A
private company has few (or no) shareholders.
- Privately-owned stock is not available for market trade.
- Detailed financial information about a private company is proprietary and therefore not available to the public.
2. Is it a subsidiary?
3. Is it a U.S.-based or international company?
2. Company Profiles
MarketLine Business Information Center (Datamonitor)
- Provides 10,000 company profiles (many including a SWOT analysis).
- Covers companies from around the world.
- More info
Hoover's Company Records (via LexisNexis Academic)
- Look for the Hoover's link in the "Business Description" section of LexisNexis' company profiles.
- Hoovers provides several thousand profiles of public and private, U.S. and international companies.
- Provides executives, company description, history, NAICS and SIC codes, segmented sales data, and competitors.
- More info
Osiris
- Provides detailed financials and descriptions of 42,000 worldwide public companies.
- Covers product, service, and business lines, sales by continents and product lines, balance sheets, income and cash flow statements, ratios, stock, bond, and earnings information, top shareholders, subsidiaries, board members, senior executives and their salaries, and merger and acquisitions.
- Data can be exporting into Excel.
- Companies can be easily compared using the Peer Report and Peer Analysis tabs.
- S&P NetAdvantage also provides financials, but only covers US-traded stocks.
Mergent Horizon (5 concurrent users)
- Covers around 6,200 public companies (NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX companies) and hundreds of product and service sectors.
- Provides detailed hypertext product and service hierarchies for each company.
- Identifies competitors, customers, suppliers, and partners.
- Provides peer-group, competitive analysis, and merger and acquisition analysis tools.
- Company descriptions include stock performance and history, earnings and revenue estimates, detailed financial statements, institutional holdings, key ratios, insider trading, segment financials, and officers and directors.
- Includes an events calendar and a powerful stock screener.
Business & Company Resource Center (2 concurrent users)
- A "one-stop shopping" database for company and business research.
- Provides brief information on 445,000 US and international companies.
- Provides reports on over 1,000 US and international industries.
- Covers associations, company financials, company histories and chronologies, company rankings, investment reports, market research reports, market share, products, suits, and claims.
- More info
More choices for company databases
3. Articles from Business Magazines
Business Source Premier
- Our largest database for business articles.
- Covers over 8,200 journals, magazines, and newspapers, including Business Week, Forbes, etc.
- Covers 1984-present, with earlier coverage for hundreds of top business journals.
- More info
Wall Street Journal (via ProQuest)
- Search for full text articles from the WSJ since 1982.
- More info
More choices for article databases
4. Annual Reports
- Includes two sections:
- An illustrated promotional section, typically written by the company's public relations department.
- This section "sells" the company as a good investment.
- It may describe with words and pictures their successful brands, major changes, new business strategies, market share, employees, and customers.
- A financial data section.
- Look in this section for the balance sheet and income statement.
- (Unlike the 10-K report sent to the SEC, the financial data in annual reports is not audited by external auditors. Therefore a 10-K report is more authoritative for corporate financials.)
- Find annual reports from the public company's investors' section.
- More on annual reports
5. Industry Analysis
S&P NetAdvantage
- Includes the S&P Industry Surveys, which provides analysis, descriptions, and data on 52 industries.
- Updated twice a year.
- More info
IBIS Industry Market Research
- Provides 25 to 45-page U.S. industry reports for all 5-digit NAICS codes (over 720 reports).
- Each report includes statistics, industry structure, product & customer segmentation, performance analysis, major players & market share, external drivers, 5-year forecasts with forecast analysis, and more.
- Reports are updated three or four times a year.
- More info
More choices for industry databases
6. Stock Recommendations
Morningstar Investment Research Center
- (Not the same as morningstar.com)
- Provides data for around 6,000 U.S. stocks
- Provides analyst reports for 1,000 of those stocks.
- Also provides screeners, a portfolio x-ray, and education tools.
S&P NetAdvantage: Stock Reports
- Do a company search to find these.
- The S&P Stock Reports provide performance data, analysis, and investment advice for 10,000 U.S. stocks.
- Presents 10 years of data.
- Each report is updated weekly, or more often for important developments.
Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, Marketwatch, etc. are also very useful of course, but don't provide analysis reports -- you gotta pay for that or use a library database like Morningstar and S&P.
7. Citation Guides
