Company Research 101
Company Research Guide
Basic Company Information Includes:
 Company name(s)
 Location
 Officers and executives
 Number of employees
 Corporate history
 Corporate structure
 Products and services
 Recent developments: products, services, and facilities
 Financial information: sales, profitability, and efficiency
 Stock exchange and current stock price
 Standing in industry or field
Company Overviews

Hoover's Academic
Hoover's company information includes a fact sheet, key people, products/operations,
industry, competitors, and basic financials and SEC documents. Hoover’s has the
superior ranking capabilities: SIC, NAICS, and an in-house industry classification provide
comparison between companies.
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/get/hooversaca

NetAdvantage (Standard & Poor's)
Provides in-depth industry overviews for 52+ industries; key financial and competitive
analysis of 7,000 public companies; and a directory of 100,000 public and private U.S.
and international companies.
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/get/netadvantage

Mergent Online (thru 6/30/09)
Mergent provides business descriptions, corporate histories and financial statements
for 11,000 U.S. public companies and 17,000 non-U.S. public companies.
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/get/mergent

Marketline Business Information Centre (accessed thru Business Source Complete)
(formerly Datamonitor)
Company Profiles: Business description, history, major products and services, locations
and subsidiaries, top competitors for 10,000 U.S. and international public and private
companies; includes SWOT analysis for the top 1000 companies.
Company Profiles:
http://web.ebscohost.com/bsi/companyinfo?vid=2&hid=107&sid=ae5c7335-cef7-43e3a607-1e8177c908e5%40sessionmgr102
SWOT Analysis:
http://web.ebscohost.com/bsi/publication?vid=2&hid=107&sid=ae5c7335-cef7-43e3a607-1e8177c908e5%40sessionmgr102

Value Line Investment Survey Reports
The Value Line Investment Survey provides information and stock picking advice on
approximately 1,700 stocks in over 100 industries, economic and stock market forecasts,
one-page write-ups about interesting and attractive stocks, model portfolios, and financial
and stock market statistics.
http://www.valueline.com/myvl/myvalueline.aspx
Company Lookup: http://www.valueline.com/secure/vlispdf/stk5000/lookup.aspx
Journals, Magazine Articles and Newspapers

Business Source Complete
Locate articles from over 8,500 scholarly business journals covering management,
economics, finance, accounting, international business and much more. This includes
the Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, MIT Sloan Management
Review and Administrative Science Quarterly.
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/get/bscomp

ABI Inform
Locate citations, abstracts and full-text of articles in more than 1000 business and
scholarly journals. Track business conditions, trends, management techniques,
corporate strategies, and industry-specific topics worldwide.
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/get/abi-global

Access World News
Access World News is a newspaper collection from NewsBank that provides full-text
articles from the electronic editions of record for more than 700 newspapers around the
globe, including 18 Florida newspapers. Dates of coverage vary for each newspaper,
with some access beginning as early as 1977.
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/get/awn
Annual Reports, SEC Filings, and Financials

SEC’s IDEA (Interactive Data Electronic Applications)
IDEA will be taking over as the main search engine for EDGAR data with the older EDGAR
data
http://idea.sec.gov/
o User Guide to IDEA: http://idea.sec.gov/idea/searchidea/idea_users_guide.html
o Company Search (since 1984):
http://idea.sec.gov/idea/searchidea/companysearch_idea.html
o Full Text Search (last 4 years):
http://searchwww.sec.gov/EDGARFSClient/jsp/EDGAR_MainAccess.jsp

SEC’s EDGAR Database
o User Guide to EDGAR: http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/edgarguide.htm
o EDGAR Company Search (since 1984):
http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html
o Descriptions of SEC Forms: http://www.sec.gov/info/edgar/forms/edgform.pdf

Hoover's Academic
Provides access to SEC documents using EDGAROnline data. Quick way to see 10-Ks.
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/get/hooversaca
Analyst Reports

IAC Investext Plus
Provides access to over 50,000 full-text investment reports on more than 11,000 public and
private corporations and 53 industries.Developed by a global roster of brokerage, investment
banking, and research firms, Investext integrates financial, marketing and corporate
information, company and industry analyst reports from 1996-
http://web7.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/111/1/1/purl=rc6_RBW?sw_aep=tall
85761

Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe
Provides access to databases, see users guide for help in selecting the databases
o Analyst Reports, Combined
o Investext Current Reports
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/get/lexis-nexis

Wall Street Transcript
o Provides analyst, money manager, and CEO interviews each week.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&jid=D9X&site=eho
st-live
o Online Industry/Company/Sector Index: http://www.twst.com/archive.html

Research Hint: You can also contact an analyst or bank that covers you company or the
industry you are interested in. They will often share their most recent report with you.
Also check with your stock brokerage for access to analyst reports. Serveral brokerages
still provide access to analyst reports.
Corporate Culture

Conference Board
Conference Board products are directed toward bringing executives knowledge, ideas,
and perspective to help them improve their skills and strengthen their performance. We
create and share intellectual capital over a wide range of critical management
endeavors. Research topics we cover include: Citizenship & Sustainability, Diversity,
Economics, Ethics, Governance, Human Resources, Leadership Development, Marketing,
the Mid-Market Sector, Operations, and Risk Management.
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/get/confboard

Vault Reports
Includes industry, career and company guides. Vault provides access to insider company
research, industry research and career advice.
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
WetFeet
Includes company, industry or career related Insider Guides. WetFeet also provides
access to company research, career research, industry research and career advice
articles.
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
Research Hint: Use the ABI/Inform and Business Source Complete to research a
company’s process. Use the company name (Google) and a process (human resources).
To find best in class examples by process use the process (Human resources) and
“award,” “best in class,” or “benchmark”
Models for Organizing your Research
No that you know all this “stuff” about your company we provide some models for
understanding your company’s strengths and weaknesses. There are many different ways to
organize company research information. Below are links to some of the more popular models
for displaying a company’s strategy/value creation data. Many of these are recommended by
professors at FSU.

Porter’s Five Forces:
The Five Forces of Competitive Position model provides a simple perspective for assessing and
analysing the competitive strength and position of a corporation or business organization.
http://www.franteractive.net/Porter-Five-Forces.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_5_forces_analysis
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_08.htm
Template: http://www.businessballs.com/portersfiveforcesdiagram.pdf

SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis:
A SWOT analysis is a subjective assessment of data which is organized by the SWOT format into
a logical order that helps understanding, presentation, discussion and decision-making. The four
dimensions are a useful extension of a basic two heading list of pro's and con's.
http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_swot_analysis.html
Template: http://www.businessballs.com/free_SWOT_analysis_template.pdf

BCG Matrix Method
This is also know as the “Cash Cow” model. The BCG matrix method is based on the product life cycle theory that
can be used to determine what priorities should be given in the product portfolio of a business unit. To ensure longterm value creation, a company should have a portfolio of products that contains both high-growth products in
need of cash inputs and low-growth products that generate a lot of cash.
http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_bcgmatrix.html

McKinsey Matrix / GE Matrix
The GE matrix / McKinsey matrix is a model to perform a business portfolio analysis on the Strategic
Business Units of a corporation.
http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/methods_ge_mckinsey.html
Here are additional links to more complete lists:
http://www.valuebasedmanagement.net/
http://www.12manage.com/i_s.html