MBA Information Resources Session

Gather Information about a Company

The Basics 
Here are three resources that offer a very nice overview of a company:

 Factiva    A product of the Dow Jones Company.  It brings together more than 14,000 leading news and business sources from more than 159 countries.

• Comes up in The Newstand section
• Click on the “Companies/Markets tab”
• Click on “Company”
• Search for your company by name or ticker.  Provides a nice overview of the company. 
• The News section defaults to the Latest News category but can be changed to either Press Releases or Trade Articles

Business and Company Resource Center  Provides access to a wide variety of global business information including competitive intelligence, career and investment opportunities, business rankings, company histories and much more.

• Click on Company
• Search by Company Name or Ticker
• Use the tabs at the top to link to news, investment reports, financials, etc
• Use the links at the left to find articles

Marketline  Original industry and company reports based on published research and primary and secondary data sources.  International in scope. 

• Click on “Browse all Companies”
• Search by company name
• Navigate through the company report using the table of contents on the left.

Digging Deeper:

Mergent Online   U.S. and International Company data.  Includes fifteen years of financial statements;  execute custom searches and reports.

• Click on “Enter Mergent Online”
• Search for company by name or ticker
• Navigate through the company report using the tabs across the top
• Download up to 15 years of financial data through the “Company Financials” tab
• To start over, click on the word “Search” at the top of the page.
• To create a list of companies, use the “Advanced Search” tab

Investext Plus   A database of financial analyst reports on companies and industries.  Analyst reports are excellent sources of information for company strategic and financial profiles, estimated projected financials on companies and key competitors, industry trends and outlooks, and more. The reports are in their original published formats, complete with charts, photographs and graphics.

• Search for a company by name or ticker; search for industry reports using the drop-down box.
• The keyword search option searches only the abstract and citation.  There is no fulltext search option
• Thomson Streetevents transcripts of earnings conference calls are available through the company search.
• Industry reports are excellent sources of data

S & P Netadvantage   Provides full-text access to a variety of corporate and industry resources produced by Standard & Poors, including S&P Register, Industry Surveys, Investment Reviews, Stock Guide, Stock Reports, Bond Guide, the latest 12 months of The Outlook, and other investment analysis tools.

• Standard and Poor’s Industry Surveys offer a thorough analysis of an industry
• To get to the Industry Surveys, click on “Industries” at the top of the page, select the report desired from the drop-down box, then click on the orange arrow.
• Change to a PDF format, if desired, at the left of the page.
• These reports contain a guideline on how to analyze a company in that particular industry