Company Financial Information (Annual Reports, SEC Filings, etc.)
Recent Data
Features: Business File contains SEC Filings and Company Financial Information.
SEC Filings:
10Ks (annual financial reports of American
companies) 10Qs (quarterly financial reports of
American companies), and 20-Fs( annual financial
reports of foreign companies trading on U.S. stock exchanges), are included in the SEC Filings File.
Disclosure Reports, Hoovers Company Profiles and Hoovers Company Capsules are
included in the Company Financial and Company
Profiles Files.
Features: Company financial information is available using Company and Markets. SEC Filings, financial snapshot, financial profile, company/industry comparison reports, and complete analyst reports are included.
Mint Global
Available to
students, faculty, and staff of Cal State Fullerton only.
Features: Complete financial statements for publicly traded companies
worldwide. Financial data on many private companies and public
subsidiaries as well.
Features: In-depth company and industry financial information and analysis.
Features: 10 years of financial statements for Domestic and International
companies. Also includes downloadable PDF files of Official
Annual Reports to Shareholders.
Features: SEC 10-K and Company Annual Reports to Shareholders are available to download.
Features: A searchable database of all SEC reports (10-K, 10-Q, etc.) available for free. Registration may be required.
Features: This is
comparable to Moody's, covering over 12,000 companies having listed and
unlisted securities. Includes many small companies not included in Moody’s.
Features: 10 years of financial statements for Domestic and International companies.
Moody's Industrial Manual provides
financial data for companies dating back to the early part of the 20th
century. It is located on the 5th Floor, South Wing at call number
HG4961.M7
Moody's International Manual provides financial data for foreign companies
dating back to the 1970s. It is located on the 5th Floor, South Wing
at call number
HG4009 .M66
SWOT analysis for companies may be found in Analyst Reports. Business Source Premier has the full collection of Datamonitor company reports. To find SWOT analysis in Business Source Premier, your search should look like this:
SWOT Analysis may also be found in Lexis-Nexis Academic. Lexis-Nexis has a collection of analyst reports prepared by investment banks called Investext. To access Investext, go to Lexis-Nexis Academic, click on Sources, then click on Find Sources. Type in Investext and click on Investext Current Reports. Click on OK. Then conduct a search that looks like this:
Private Company Information
A publicly traded
company is required by law to release financial data at certain set times.
Private companies, on the other hand, are
not required to open their books to the public, and generally do not.
This makes finding information about the company,
particularly financial information, very hard to come by.
Mint Global is a database that provides financial information on companies around the world, including many private companies. Start your search here.
The most detail on a private company can be found using Hoovers. Hoovers will cover most larger private firms, as well as some mid-size companies. Another good source for information is Business Source Premier. In Business Source Premier, you can find Datamonitor Reports on large companies.
Once you have tried those reports, the next step would be to search for some basic company data. You can do this in Lexis-Nexis by searching through Experian Business Reports and the U.S. Business Directory.
Experian Business Reports is the only source we have where you will find financial information on a private company other than sales and number of employees. Experian Business Reports provides complete analysis of a company's debt, including how much money they owe, how big their credit line is, their payment history, and what lines of business they are borrowing money for.
To access these directories from the Lexis-Nexis home page, click on SOURCES, then click on FIND SOURCES and type in EXPERIAN or US BUSINESS DIRECTORY. If the company has at least $1M in sales or 20 employees, some more detailed directory information is available through the D&B Million Dollar Database.
Once you have tried the directory
databases, move on to searching for articles about the company.
Lexis-Nexis Academic and
Factiva have the most
articles to search through, so
it is best to use those databases when looking for private company information.
If it is a larger firm, you will be able to do a search on
on a variety of subjects, just
like with a public company.
If you are dealing with a small
business, there will be a lot less information available, so just type the name
of the company, and if necessary, the location of
the company, into the database and do
a search on all dates.
Finally, the last place to check for information on a private company is to just do a regular Internet search. Go to Google, Yahoo, MSN Live, etc. and search for the company name and see if you find anything. At the very least, you will find the company's web site (if they have one), and maybe some discussion on a message board. This type of information is not as reliable as what you would find in company reports or articles, and should really only be used if you can't find anything else about the company. For more information on how to evaluate web sites, see Six Criteria for Evaluating Web Sites.
Updated and maintained by Robert Sage rsage@fullerton.edu
An administrative page of the Paulina June & George Pollak Library at
California State University, Fullerton.
(c) 2008 California State University, Fullerton. All rights reserved.
Last Updated: 9 July 2008.