Basic Resources for Research in Financial Statements

Snapshots: For a quick profile of a company's financial position, use
Morningstar Library Edition (from Article Databases & More)
Value Line (Davis Reference Desk), or
YAHOO!FINANCE:

Annual Reports/SEC Filings/Investment Information:
Annual reports to shareholders and reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and commercial investment reports may be obtained from the following resources:

Factiva. (Article Databases & more)
Use the "Companies/Markets" tab on the top of the screen to search for your company. Use the "Custom Report" feature at the bottom of the page to get just the information that you need.

LexisNexis Academic (from Article Databases & More)
(In the database choose Business from the list at the left of the screen and then then Company Financial)
Includes:
Disclosure Reports
(Disclosure(R) Online Database contains business and financial information extracted from annual and periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for over 10,000 publicly-owned companies. To be included in the database, a company must have at least 500 shareholders of one class of stock, at least $ 5 million in assets, and must have filed a 10-K(annual filing document for U.S. companies) or 20-F (annual filing document for non-U.S. companies) in the past 18 months. New companies must have filed the appropriate Registration Statement.
Stock Reports include:
Nelson's Company Research Reports
covering more than 14,000 different public companies, 97 different industries and specialties in nine global geographic regions. A brief description(headline/title) is provided for each report.
Nelson's Consensus Earnings Estimates
Nelson provides consensus earnings estimates and related statistics for over 6,000 U.S. and 7,000 non-U.S. corporations. The information is compiled from the individual estimates of hundreds of research firms.
Vickers Institutional Holdings
Information is extracted from various Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including 13Fs, 13Ds, Form 4s and Form 144s. Vickers Stock Research Corporation auguments these sources with its own survey of institutions.
Vickers Securities Report
Information is extracted from various Securities and Exchange Commission filings including 13Fs, 13Ds, Form 4s and Form 144s. Vickers Stock Research Corporation augments these sources with its own survey of institutions.
Zacks Investment Research, Inc. Consensus Earnings Projections
Estimates of earnings-per-share(EPS) for over 3,000 firms listed on stock exchanges or traded over the counter.
NAARS - Annual Reports 1972-1995

Mergent Online. (Article Databses & more)
Contains information on approximately 20,000 companies from about 80 countries. Data includes: company histories, business, property, officers, directors, long term debt, Mergent ratings, capital stock, income statement, balance sheet, stock splits, dividend payment history.
The library has made available:
U.S. Company Data, U.S. Company Archives Data, U.S. Annual Reports, International Company Data, International Company Archives Data, International Annual Reports, Institutional Holdings Data, Insider Trading Data, FactSheets, Expanded Long-Term Debt, Equity Portraits, Corporate Bond Portraits, all SEC reports
Special features of this database include the ability to create reports that contain only the needed information and the ability to download all financial data to excel.

The SEC's EDGAR web site contains many kinds of reports for many companies (not all) from 1994 onwards.

Most companies now publish their annual report to shareholders on their corporate Website. Look for links to current reports at the Annual Report Gallery (http://www.reportgallery.com/) or at Hoovers Online (http://www.hoovers.com/)

Alternatives to Full Financial Reports

Among the many surrogates or summaries of corporate financial information are these time-tested sources:

Moody's Manuals. Davis Library has 1901 to present; available in the microforms department
N.B. Several years of this information is included in Mergent Online.

Value Line Investment Survey. Davis Library has 1952 to present; (1970-75 missing!)
current issues are at the Reference Desk.

For more Business and Economics Assistance,
Please contact Rita W. Moss, Business and Economics Librarian
moss@unc.edu
(919)962-1151

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