Finding Financial Ratios
Librarian: Gary Klein
E-mail: gklein@willamette.edu
Library web pages for AGSM
Spring 2016
https://gklein.youcanbook.me
http://libguides.willamette.edu/agsm
http://libguides.willamette.edu/financial-ratios
http://library.willamette.edu/extras/classes/agsm/financial-ratios.doc
2 SETS OF FINANCIAL RATIO RESOURCES IN HATFIELD LIBRARY’S REFERENCE COLLECTION
There are two long standing series of books that provide financial ratios for large numbers of industries
organized by SIC/NAICS Codes.
Each of these reference books offers different types of financial data, in different formats, compiled from totally
different sets of underlying data. Each also has a glossary that spells out the definitions for each financial
statistic or ratio published.
Each of these resources has its own unique features, as well as supporters and critics, depending on which
type of statistic or ratio is necessary for your particular needs.
Industry Norms & Key Business Ratios (click for a sample page)
This annual compilation contains aggregate data for both Public and Private corporations. The data is compiled
anonymously from over one million corporate financial statements that are voluntarily provided to Dun & Bradstreet
as part of their credit rating service. Current aggregate data is presented for 22 data elements. Within each SIC/NAICS
code cluster, fourteen financial ratios are computed for Upper, Median and Lower quartiles. Hatfield Library has older
issues, 1982-2013 on the 2nd floor of the library with the same call number.
WILLAMETTE UNIV: Hat Lib Ref #HF 5681 .R25 I53 2014
PORTLAND STATE UNIV: Lib Ref Desk #HD 9724 .I514 2012/2013
MULTNOMAH COUNTY PUBLIC LIB: Central Lib Business Ref Desk #R- 658.15 I42
2014
RMA Annual Statement Studies
(click for a sample page)
This annual time series aggregates data for both Public and Private corporations. The data is compiled
anonymously from the volunteer efforts of approximately 3,000 banks that belong to the RMA (Risk Management
Association, previously named Robert Morris Assoc, offering educational services to lending and credit risk
professionals). The 113,000 financial statements that drive this statistical report come from companies that have
borrowing relationships with banks that belong to RMA. Within each SIC/NAICS code cluster, you can locate up to 44
statistics for the past five years. The same 44 statistics are also presented within each industrial category with up to six
size rankings by Total Assets and six size rankings by Total Sales. Hatfield Library has older issues, 1982-2013 on the
2nd floor of the library with the same call number.
WILLAMETTE UNIV: Hat Lib Ref #HF 5681 .B2 R6 2014-15
PORTLAND STATE UNIV: Lib Ref Desk #HC 101 .R6 2012/2013
MULTNOMAH COUNTY PUBLIC LIB: Central Lib Business Ref Desk #R- 658.15
R642a 2014-15
Finding Financial Ratios
Spring 2016
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2 LIBRARY BASED ONLINE RESOURCES (requires WU login)
HOOVER’S - Online Business Network
In addition to using this database to obtain snapshot sized profiles of individual companies, Hoovers Online
offers the ability to determine a handful of major competitors in the same industry. This continually updated database
offers basic services free to anyone. A number of features are only accessible if you purchase your personal subscription
to Hoovers. The information obtained from the free side of this database should open doors for further research that you
can then perform on other resources.
Start out by telling Hoovers that you are looking for a Company. Large corporations will often have multiple
entries for various divisions & similarly named operating units. Some companies formally include “THE” as part of their
name, which happens to be the case with the parent company of Fred Meyer Stores, “The Kroger Company”. There are
several ways of searching for a company, including Stock Trading Symbols. Publicly traded firms will have substantially
more information available. You should use the tab called “Products & Operations” to make sure that a company you
select has the products, services and brand names that you are relevant to your needs.
There are 6 options to explore under the tab called “Financials”. When you request Historical Financials,
you will get up to 10 years for a handful of data elements, as well as 9 items from the latest year-end financials. If you
click on Income Statement you can get as many as 19 data elements that can go back either 5 years, or 5 quarters.
Likewise, the Balance Sheet option and the Cash Flow option can each go back either 5 years, or 5 quarters.
You can also find additional data & ratios under the tab called “Financial Market Data”.
MERGENT ONLINE
Provides full-text access to a variety of company specific resources, current & historical summaries, SEC
documents, competitive analyses, and financial ratios produced by Mergent Online for stock market oriented investment
decision making. Some industrial data is available, but is primarily text oriented industry analyses. Mergent Online
works best when you know either the name or the stock ticker symbol of a publicly traded corporation, from which point
you can cross over into other analytical resources.
Significant clusters of information are available from a few key tabs that are present for all publicly traded
companies: Company details; Company financials; Reports; and Competitors.
Underneath the Company Financial tab, you will find historical information available either annually or
quarterly, as far back as 15 years. Please note that when you ask Mergent Online for quarterly data, there is a difference
between the “As Reported” version and the “Standardized” version! “As Reported” will only show the First, Second and
Third quarters in the “Quarterly mode”. If you want to see the Fourth Quarter results through the “As Reported” lens,
then you will need to choose the Annual option. But if you want to view the reports through the “Standardized” lens,
then you will automatically see all 4 quarters of each year, lined up in perfect sequence. When looking for historical
financial data, there are 5 options to choose from: Balance sheet; Income statement; Retained earnings; Cash
flow, and also All sections. Mergent Online also offers options with respect to Footnotes, as well as the scale of
rounding.
Many of the resource segments offer pre-formatted output options. At any time, you can click on the Report
Builder tab, and custom build a report with the data elements of your choice. Output options typically include: HTML;
Word documents; Excel spreadsheets or PDF documents.
EARNINGS REPORTS & TRANSCRIPTS OF EARNINGS CONFERENCE CALLS (free to anyone)
SEEKING ALPHA – Free independent online service
Operating since 2004, this service relies on a mixture of advertising and user fees for premium services. You
really need to become registered user, to get the full range of its free services.
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Seeking Alpha focuses equally on individual consumers who invest in stock market instruments, as well as
professional investment brokers, investment advisors and portfolio analysts.
The primary attraction for AGSM students to Seeking Alpha is the ability for
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Centralized access to earnings reports of 4,000 publicly traded companies in standardized formats &
easy to read type fonts.
Centralized access to “Earnings Conference Calls” for 4,000 companies, less than 24 hours after each
call is completed.
Centralized access to news about 4,000 publicly traded companies based on Industry sectors
Industry reports are cross linked by companies mentioned
Easy access by Company name, Stock ticker symbol
Ability to create personalized RSS fees, Email alerts, or SMS alerts of corporate news, earnings
statements, analytical reports, and earnings conference calls.
The principal drawback is that Seeking Alpha does not carry as deep a backfile of archival documents as some
other investment oriented websites. Some of the analytical reports are only available to paid subscribers of their premium
level “professional” service.
Starting point for this class use of Seeking Alpha:
http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/WFM/transcripts
6 ONLINE RESOURCES FOF STOCK MARKET DATA & FINANCIAL COMPARISONS (free to anyone)
WIKINVEST – Free investment oriented Wiki
This advertising supported series of web services is primarily designed for the “do it yourself investor.”
Wikinvest arranges a large amount of its content more a format that more closely resemble Wikipedia, than
any other stock market resource that is freely available to the public. The advertising that they do carry seems
to be less taxing of low powered computers than other stock market data providers. If you are graphically
inclined, you will often see charts quietly & quickly popup on your screen as you move your cursor around.
Wikinvest tends to present more information on any one page in textual format that most other stock market
data systems that offer services for free. Wikinvest tries to include footnotes & references to external
resources whenever possible, in a style that resembles how Wikipedia carries its underlying reference
citations. Large portions of its corporate summaries are written by users, in an open style format similar to how
Wikipedia is constructed. You are encouraged to create a personal profile on this website, but it is not a
requirement to use it.
Starting point for this class use of Wikinvest: http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/wfm
CNBC – Free online service of CNBC telvision network
This impetus behind this television network is to feed up to the minute news about stock market activity
to existing & potential investors. At times it tries to cater to the information needs of high volume amateur
investors, as well as slower paced “do it yourself” investors. Since CNBC’s origins are as a television network,
its website tends to have a larger percentage of video news stories, rather than text based news stories.
A key feature of CNBC’s data, is that they will identify up to 20 peers for a publicly traded firm that they
carry in their database. Typically, CNBC;s financial data will display up to 5 quarters, or 4 years of financial
data.
Starting point for this class use of CNBC: http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/wfm
Finding Financial Ratios
Spring 2015
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Hatfield Library
FINANCIAL TIMES OF LONDON – Free online service of daily newspaper
This UK based newspaper provides more coverage of publicly traded firms based outside of the US.
Their “business profiles” seem to be more up to date in suggesting reasonable lists of competitors, and they
tend to list more competitors than other stock market data services.
However, their “financial” information covers fewer points in time.
Starting point for this class use of Financial Times:
http://markets.ft.com/research/Markets/Tearsheets/Summary?s=wfm:nsq
NEW YORK TIMES – Free online service of daily newspaper
This online service is relatively fast loading. Carries up to 5 years, or 5 quarters of financial information
for each publicly traded firm. It has barely any coverage for smaller sized firms that are publicly traded.
Starting point for this class use of New York Times:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/whole_foods_market_i
nc/index.html
WALL STREET JOURNAL – Free online service of daily newspaper
Offers more use of small graphics to show recent trend directions. Carries up to 5 years or 5 quarters
of financial data. Offers some balance sheet ratios & income statement ratios that is not found in some of the
other stock market data services.
Starting point for this class use of Wall Street Journal:
http://quotes.wsj.com/WFM/financials
YAHOO FINANCE – Free online service
This advertising supported series of web services is primarily designed for the “do it yourself investor.”
Yahoo Finance offers a decent array of quick navigational links between almost any publicly traded company,
its competitors, and some basic industry specific information.
Many of Yahoo’s advertisers incorporate various types of popup windows, moving images and
interactive devices that try to track who uses this service, it can cause problems with some browsers. Google’s
Chrome browser seems to work problem free when viewing this website.
When you request Annual income statements, the most you will get from Yahoo is just 3 years, while
the Quarterly data maxes out at 4 quarters.
Starting point for this use of Yahoo Finance:: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=wfm
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Hatfield Library
From the light blue panel on the left side, click on the link for Competitors and you will get the following table:
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Make note of the competitor’s ticker symbols & names. Note that one of the competitors is privately held.
Now, go to the left column called, look for “Industry” and click on that link. This new page will spell out
which Sector and Industry these stock analysts have placed Whole Foods, as well as the performance of the
stock & industry on the last reported trading session:
Just below that box is a link in the center of the line called “View Grocery Store Industry Center”. Click on that
link, and then on the next screen, look in the upper left corner, in the light grey area for a link called “Leaders &
Laggards”. Click on that link.
You will then be able to see the top 10 leaders, and the bottom 10 laggards. You can then choose from 15
different metrics that have been pre-computed by Yahoo, to display the Leaders and Laggards for each metric.
Metrics that relate to Stock Prices are updated daily.
You can view all of the company names that Yahoo Finance considers to be competitors of Whole Foods by
going to the far left column, and clicking on the link called “Company Index”:
Finding Financial Ratios
Spring 2015
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Hatfield Library
In the case of Whole Foods, YAHOO is suggesting that there are 18 publicly traded companies that compete
with Whole Foods for the industry that they call “Grocery Stores”:
Alon Holdings Blue Square - Israel Ltd. [BSI]
Arden Group, Inc. [ARDNA]
Casey's General Stores, Inc. [CASY]
Companhia Brasileira de Distribuição [CBD]
Core-Mark Holding Company, Inc. [CORE]
Etablissements Delhaize Frères et Cie "Le Lion"
S.A. [DEG]
Ingles Markets, Incorporated [IMKTA]
QKL Stores Inc. [QKLS]
Ruddick Corporation [RDK]
Safeway Inc. [SWY]
Finding Financial Ratios
Spring 2015
SUPERVALU INC. [SVU]
Susser Holdings Corporation [SUSS]
The Fresh Market, Inc. [TFM]
The Kroger Co. [KR]
The Pantry, Inc. [PTRY]
Village Super Market, Inc. [VLGEA]
Weis Markets, Inc. [WMK]
Whole Foods Market, Inc. [WFM]
Winn-Dixie Stores, Inc. [WINN]
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If you explore each of these companies, then you might understand why there is no such thing as a list of
publicly traded competitors that will make everyone happy, in terms of peer comparisons for Whole Foods!
However, you can rejoice over the fact that you now have a good authoritative listing of publicly traded
competitors, within a specific industry. And you also have a standard set of clickable links that will allow you
to get comparable data for those firms
Go through the listing and one at time, click on a company’s name and you will get Yahoo’s Summary of
that company, in a standard format, much like what we originally viewed when we started searching for Whole
Foods. You can then view Yahoo Finance’s Profile of that company. Each profile tries to display each
corporation’s mailing address, phone number, website, business summary, and its top five executives.
Whenever you are looking at Yahoo Finance’s information for just a single company, you will always have the
same variety of clickable options on the left side of the screen inside the light blue column.
Near the bottom of that left side column, you will find links for Income Statement and for Balance
Sheet.
Each of those pages is also switchable between Annual data or Quarterly date. All of Yahoo’s financial
options is based on each particular company’s Fiscal Year.
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Gary Klein
Hatfield Library