Online Resources
for Company, Industry, and
Financial Statement Analysis

compiled by

Dr. Del Hawley, PhD
Senior Associate Dean and
 Associate Professor of Finance
The University of Mississippi
School of Business Administration

Resources available through the J. D. Williams Library at Ole Miss
Resources available to Business Week subscribers
Resources available to anyone for free
Books worth owning (and reading) that won't bust your budget
Dr. Hawley's tutorial for basic financial statement analysis

MDDI offers basic company information on American public and private companies with sales higher than $9 million or more than 180 employees. This tool is useful for screening companies for additional analysis.

Only 2-5 users can access MDDI at one time; please log off when you are finished.

Search for company and industry information as well as articles. Includes investment analyses information. A GREAT resource! Financial data is in a format that can be copied into a spreadsheet.

Choose "Business" from the left-side menu to get to a page with links for business news, industry and market news, financial reports, company profiles, and a great comparison tool.

Mergent (formerly Moody's) is an outstanding source for company details, including history, key dates, joint ventures, property, and subsidiaries for more than 35,000 US and non-US companies. Also offers current and historical (back 15 years) financial data including income statements, balance sheets, retained values, financial ratios, analysis, and stock prices. Data can be directly downloaded to Excel for analysis. Some ratios and financial analyses are provided as well.

This example spreadsheet shows how to access and download data from this source.

Access to Mergent is limited to five users. If you cannot access the database try at a later time. Always log off Mergent Online when you are finished. LOG OFF -- DON'T JUST CLOSE YOUR BROWSER!

Contains information on publicly-traded companies including company profiles, stock, bond, and other investment information and analysis. Includes full-text versions of S&P's Industry Surveys dating back to 1996. Not so great for financial information, but a treasure trove for all other information.

The J. D. Williams Library has provided a campus-wide site license to the premier database and research tool for corporate financial information – Research Insights on the Web (RIWeb). This is also known as Compustat. This outstanding tool is useful not only for finance, accounting, and economics research and classes, but also for anyone who invests in stocks or who wants quick and easy access to company information, industry/sector averages, market indexes, and other economic indicators. The database includes 20 years of data on U.S. and global companies, including those that are currently inactive. Data includes all financial statement items, stock prices, volume, dividends, earnings, etc., as well as a comprehensive database on executive compensation. The database is kept current to the most recent quarter. With our new wireless network now up and running, RIWeb is an excellent resource with which students can research companies or industries from anywhere on the UM network.

RIWeb is a Microsoft Excel add-in, which means it installs as a component of Excel and is used like other spreadsheet functions, plus it installs its own user interface inside Excel so that those who are not Excel gurus can still make full use of it. This seamless integration with Excel makes working with the data very easy. Once you have installed the Excel add-in, you need to be connected to the data site. Access to the data site requires that you be connected to the UM campus network (which includes Tupelo, DeSoto, dorms, and (I think) fraternities and sororities) or that you access it through the J.D. Williams Library (a valid UM ID is required).  

To install the RIWeb add-in on a computer on the UM Network, follow the instructions at http://intranet.bus.olemiss.edu/faq/riweb.

To install the add-in on an off-campus computer, go to the library's database listing page, click on "R" in the alphabet listing, and then click on "Research Insight on the Web (RIWeb)". On the next page, follow the instructions under "RIWeb Excel Addin".

A brief tutorial to get you started using RIWeb is provided here.

Value Line is one of the oldest and most respected names in investor information on publicly traded companies. With the Library's campus site license, you get access to a huge amount of information, including outstanding screening tools and excellent company and industry forecasts.

To access the research tools on the site, go to http://www.olemiss.edu/cgi-bin/library/value.pl and click on the Research Center tab at the top, then click on the "login here" link. It should log you in automatically, and it is supposed to be available both on and off campus -- but you may need to use your ID barcode to get in from off-campus.

Once you are logged in, try out the tools. Under MY ACCOUNT on the left-side menu click on INVESTMENT SURVEY and enter a company or industry in one of the input boxes. For example, enter WMT in the LOOKUP COMPANY box and press ENTER. This should open a new window with the PDF and HTML versions of the current report on Wal Mart. Click on the HTML icon to open the report, which contains just about everything you would want to know about the company in the most concise format available anywhere. Click the BACK arrow to return to the PDF/HTML report page and click enter RETAIL STORE in the SEARCH FOR box, and also check the INDUSTRY option below the input box. Click SEARCH. This will give you a list of all of the companies that are members of the retail store industry group.

On the left menu, click on STOCK SCREENING. Here you can enter a wide range of selection criteria, and the system will return the list of all companies that fit within those criteria.

There are many other useful tools and a wealth of information resources on the site.

Also, most public libraries will have a print subscription to Value Line. Our library has discontinued the print subscription because it added the online subscription. Back issues are available in print.

This new addition to the Library's licenses provides far more than just advertising information. Among other things, it provides:

• a company overview
• a list of competitors
• a list of key personnel
• a list of advertising agencies doing work for the company
• a list of the company's brands

In addition, it has search tools and lots of information on advertising agencies.

With BizMiner, you can access reports by industry segment (16,000 segments are available), market area (down to a specific county or municipality), and business size (industry-wide, small businesses, and startups). Financial reports include industry/segment average data for common financial ratios, average sales/income/expenses, and average balance sheet line items. Market reports include industry segment failure rates, market volume, average sales and sales class trends, sales per employee, average staffing and employment class trends, growth rates, and more.

This is an academic license, and as such is for student and instructional (not personal) use. The data is not the current data that is available only to commercial subscribers, but rather is archived data that is generally one year older than the current data.

According to the BizMiner website, raw data utilized in BizMiner reports is sourced from the nation's most acknowledged business credit reporting agencies and other private databases. In total, BizMiner accesses over half a billion sourced data points from eighteen million business operations for each of its twice annual updates. Census and other government data is used incidentally to inform and test projections for non-reporting firms.

To access the site, go to http://www.BizMiner.com if you are on the UM campus, or use the J. D. Williams' library gateway (you must have a valid UM ID card) if you are not on campus (www.olemiss.edu/depts/general_library/) and click on ARTICLES AND DATABASES and then find and click on BIZMINER). If you do not see the heading "Bizminer Acadmic Site" on the first page that loads, you have not been authenticated as a UM academic user and are instead in the commercial site. Check your location and try to login again.

The first time you access any of the data you will need to register to create a user name and password, but you can use the same name and password after that whenever you return to the site.

A brief tutorial on obtaining reports from this site is here.
 

Business Source Premier is a great source for news and information about companies and industries. It also offers numerous industry reports. Do a Basic search for your industry (use the Basic Search screen). At the results page, click on "Industry Reports." All industry information available in Business Source Premier will be listed.

When you get your subscription, you will be able to access this site for Business Week's entire archive of articles and other highly useful information.

These three sources are compared at MBAWare. All three include both public and private companies in the averages, with a huge number of business categories included.

Larger public libraries will tend to have RMA and may have other similar resources as well.

All SEC filings for public companies. LOTS of information, but straight text so not in a format that is useful for analysis in Excel.

Lots of free information, and lots you can pay for, too. Financials are in a format that can be copied into a spreadsheet for analysis. Also has SEC financial filings in a format that can be copied into a spreadsheet. For 10-Qs and 10-K's, select the ENTIRE DOCUMENT link for best results.

Tremendous source of all sorts on information on (mostly) public companies, but financials are in text when copied into a spreadsheet. (Not very useful) Also, most financials are only for two years. Otherwise, this site is a goldmine for information.

Like Yahoo in that there is a wealth of information, but the financials are more complete AND they are great for copying into a spreadsheet.

Current or past news on anything -- great source for company news.

WOW! This extensive site provides a step-by-step outline for researching industries or specific companies along with hundreds of links to government sites, commercial sources, other industry guides, and much more.

Dr. Damodaran is one of the leading experts in the field of valuation, and this site is the mother lode of great data, all kept up to date and available in spreadsheet format. Go here to find great industry comparison data including major ratios, cost of capital and its components, capital structure, earnings, EVA, betas, dividends, working capital, and much more. You can even watch some of his lectures!

Also see this very useful and well-done article, Primer on financial statements

Get industry average figures for major income statement items, with industries broken down into subcategories. Other industry average information is provided as well.

CFO Magazine is a free publication that is full of great information and timely news concerning corporate finance and accounting. All of the articles in its vast archive are searchable online. In particular, these articles are great sources for industry comparison data:

• Capital Ideas: The 2005 Working Capital Survey (you can download a spreadsheet with all of the survey results here) Get working capital ratios for all major companies with industry averages as well.
• Sitting Tight: The 2005 Capital Spending Scorecard (download results in a spreadsheet here) Results for major companies with industry averages.
• Stuck on Yellow: The 2005 Cash Management Scorecard (download results in a spreadsheet here) Results for major companies with industry averages.

Several articles on this site are very useful in covering some fairly advanced analysis topics. For example, see:

• Intro to Fundamental Analysis
• Advanced Financial Statement Analysis
• Ratio Analysis
• Industry Handbook

Start with the first item on the left-side menu and work through all of the others to get a good overview of basic financial analysis.

A useful summary of the major ratios and what they mean.

Lots and lots of example spreadsheets for doing all sorts of financial analysis. These spreadsheets serve as tutorials for doing some very useful things in Excel.

Need to brush up on your Excel skills or learn some new ones? (The answer is YES). This site has what you need -- for FREE.

This books does a great job of making financial statements and all of the associated jargon and terminology understandable by non-financial managers. Although it is geared toward small business owners, it is useful for much more than that. This is a great place to start if you want to understand what financial reports are all about.

Similar to the above, but with a light-hearted and fun approach.

Another one like the two above.

Incredibly cheap, worth it's weight in gold, and (you're not going to believe this) FUN TO READ. This is an advanced look at the nitty gritty of financial statement analysis, but it's still understandable by non-academic practitioners. It focuses on reading between the lines to ferret out the real story in the financial statements, and is filled with interesting examples and anecdotes. The authors are among the world's most noted and successful financial analysts. Any aspiring analyst will be glad they read this one.