Public Companies

There will be much more readily available information about public companies because they have to issue annual reports and file financial information with Securities and Exchange Commission.

Annual Reports

Company Home Page

Company Financial Statements

Subsidiary Financials

SEC Filings

Annual Reports are a corporation’s financial statement prepared yearly for stockholders. Information typically included in an annual report includes a Chairman or Presidents letter, description of main sales and marketing activities, management discussion and analysis, auditors report, detailed financial statements and 10-year summary of financial figures, list of subsidiaries and company addresses, and list of directors and officers. Many annual reports are corporate works of art and include detailed charts, tables, graphs, and photographs. The Annual Report provides a clear view of how the company views itself.

Annual reports of most large corporations are available to persons other than stockholders upon request and are often used as public relations vehicles. Besides giving comparative financial statements for the current and past years, some give divisional reports of past activities and future plans. Many companies will feature links to the digitized version of their annual reports from their company Internet site.

You can obtain copies of annual reports from the following sources:

• Annual Report Gallery

The Report Gallery boasts that it contains the largest, most complete and up-to-date listings of annual reports on the Internet. Once a company is found, it can be viewed in HTML or PDF format. Free service.

For Historical Annual Reports:

• ABI/Inform Complete

The scope of the Annual Reports that are featured are generally 1985-2008. Most companies will feature the most current three years on their websites which makes them easy to access. Therefore, if you are looking for coverage in the mid-80’s through the mid 2000’s, ABI is worth a look.

2. Under Browse Featured Content. scroll down to Company Reports and select: ProQuest Annual Reports Collection

3. You can search by company, industry, or date. Some companies will feature a long backlist of reports, while others will be quite limited.

Company Home pages can provide a wealth of information including press releases, products, and services, company officers, company histories, stock quotes, annual reports. and more. The company’s Internet site can also be used to verify print information, which can go out of date.

Hoover’s

Hoover’s, Inc. includes a database of 23 million companies, with in-depth coverage of more than 40,000 of the world’s top business enterprises. For access to some of the in-depth reports, see: Lexis/Nexis