LibGuides: Master of Management Studies Resources Guide: Company Research

Company Overviews & Current Financials

ABI/INFORM complete
Contains full text market research reports focusing on companies and broad industry sectors: consumer goods, energy, finance, healthcare, and technology. Market analysis and forecasting looks at major issues and threats for each sector with analytical commentary and data.
EBSCO Business Source Complete
A comprehensive database providing full text access to articles on management, finance, economics, industry, accounting, and international business from popular business magazines, scholarly journals, and trade publications. Also contains other full text sources of information such as financial data, book reviews, case studies, conference proceedings, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, and SWOT analyses.
Gale Virtual Reference Library
Contains encyclopedias and reference books on a variety of subjects. A nice alternative to Wikipedia; includes business plans.
Hoover's company profiles
Find up to date proprietary editorial content covering more than 40,000 public and non-public companies and 225,000 key executives.

Company Overviews - Public Web Sites

Yahoo Company Index
"Yahoo! Finance brings you company profiles from Capital IQ, who provides users with information on over 9,000 public companies, including contact information, business summaries, officer and employee information, sector and industry classifications, business and earnings announcement summaries, and financial statistics and ratios. Yahoo adds stock charts based on historical data from Commodity Systems, Inc. (CSI), and links to other resources."
Manta
"Manta is the world's largest online community for promoting and connecting small business. With more than one million registered users and nearly 64 million company profiles, business owners and professionals use Manta to promote and differentiate their offerings and "be found" online by customers and prospects."

Historical Company Information, Annual Reports and SEC Filings

SEC Filings & Forms/EDGAR
(Public Web Site) Search for official company filings including 10-K's, 10-Q's and many more using the EDGAR system back to 1994.
Library of Congress - Public Company Research
(Public web site). This informative page includes information on where to find/purchase historical company reports and filings.

Company Research

Photograph of John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History 1919 From the Duke Digital Collection.

Overview of Company Information

It is easier to find information about public companies (those that sell stock to shareholders) than about private companies (those that are privately owned by an individual or a group). Public companies in the United States are required by law to file documents with the Securities and Exchange commission (SEC). These include the 10K (annual)and 10Q (quarterly) reports. In addition, public companies issue an annual report to shareholders.

When looking for information about a company, consider both information from the company itself (e.g., the company website, SEC filings, press releases, etc.) as well as information about the company written by others (e.g., newspaper articles, analyst reports, articles by professors, etc.).

Finding information about a company includes the following steps:

Get an overview of the company, find out if it is public or private
Find the company website and review it carefully, particularly the sections for investors or media/press.
If the company is public, find relevant 10K and 10Q reports and annual reports to shareholders
Search for news, magazine and other periodical articles for information. This may be the only way to find information on private companies.
If the company is public, search for analyst and brokerage reports. These sometimes contain an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT).
Identify competitors.

Company Web Sites

Company web sites can provide a wealth of information, particularly for public companies. Look for press releases, investor information including presentations and events and filings such as SEC filings, annual reports or corporate social responsibility or "community" reports. Use information from the company carefully and watch for bias or an overly-optimistic interpretation of factual data.

Analyst Reports and SWOT Analysis

Look here for expert opinions on companies:

Thomson One
This database only works with Internet Explorer. Search for reports by company name or ticker symbol. Contributors include JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and many more. Reports provided by Datamonitor/MarketLine and GlobalData often include SWOT analysis.
Passport
The Passport/GMID (Global Market Information Database) by Euromonitor provides a wide range of consumer market and industry information in more than 80 countries around the world. It includes company profiles, some with SWOT analysis, country briefings, sector briefings, sector data, industry watch articles and detailed Consumer Lifestyle reports.
Marketline advantage
Contains full text market research reports focusing on companies and broad industry sectors: consumer goods, energy, finance, healthcare, and technology. Market analysis and forecasting looks at major issues and threats for each sector with analytical commentary and data.

Private Companies

Information on private companies can be sparse. Private companies are not required to file any financial data in the U.S., with exception of registraton data filed with the Secretary of State, in the state where they are registerd. Databases like Hoovers and Reference USA have some basic data on private companies; Capital IQ (in-Library access only) also has some information Often 'local press' have more stories on a locally based company than national newspapers. (e.g. San Jose Mercury news versus The New York Times). Local newspapers can be found on Proquest, LexisNexis Academic or Factiva.

Secretaries of State links - Coordinted Legal Tech
Lists and links for Secretaries of State and business look-up links.

Annual Reports - Public Web Sites

Try these sites if you cannot locate the annual report you need at the company web site or using Duke databases. You may need to purchase the report from these sources.