Transcript International Company Research

International Company
Research
The Essentials
Getting Started

There are many places to look for international company information. The
purpose of this tutorial is to provide a solid foundation on which to conduct
basic research and to provide guidance on what sources are most
appropriate.

All of the resources used in this tutorial are available via the NYU Virtual
Business Library

For off campus access to databases you will be prompted for your NYU Net
ID and password. To get a password, or to reset it, go to ITS Start

Please Note! Stern accounts will not work off campus. Stern faculty and
students must set up NYU Home Accounts for remote access.
What Types of Information will You be Consulting?
People conduct company research for a variety of reasons. Most commonly,
they’re looking for information for investments purposes, background
information such as news or analysis, or a combination of both for a job
interview or research paper. Let’s look at the differences between these
types of information and some basic issues.



Financial Information: Public vs Private companies. Detailed financial
information is generally only available for publicly held companies. Publicly
held companies must publish financial information about themselves. This
information is freely available to anyone. Privately held companies are
under no obligation to reveal anything.
Investment Reports: Available only for publicly held companies, these are
great for detailed analysis, trends and forecasts.
News, Articles and Company Websites: Great for background, news,
product information, trends and more. Essential for gathering information
on privately held companies.
Company & Financial
Information page
This tutorial is intended to
acquaint you with some of
the most commonly used
sources for international
company information. As
you can see from the
Company & Financial
Information page on the
Virtual Business Library,
there are many more
resources that you can use.
To find out more about
these databases, just click
on the more link next to
the database name.
Databases and Resources
The following resources represent essential international company research tools. For a more complete list of business
resources, see the Virtual Business Library
Financial Information
●Hoover’s Online
●Mergent Online
●Company Websites
●AMADEUS
Investment Reports
●Investext
●ISI Emerging Markets
Articles, News and Background Information
●Company Websites
●ABI Inform (ProQuest) News, trade and scholarly publications
●Ebsco Business Source Premier News, trade, scholarly publications and SWOT analyses
Hoover’s Online
Hoover’s is a great
starting point for
company
information. It
provides basic
financial info, news,
a corporate history,
biographical
information on the
top executives, a
list of competitors
and more.
Mergent Online
Use Mergent for summary balance sheets and income statements, stock pricing and
to create custom company reports for single or multiple companies.
Enter the company name or ticker
symbol.
Make custom reports
for single or multiple
companies
Select
currency
Get up to 15 years or
quarters, downloadable into
Excel
Make Multiple Company Comparison Reports
Build a list by selecting individual
companies..........
Build a list by industry, stock exchange, country or
multiple criteria.
Industry code for
breweries
Select all the companies in the list, or just the ones you select to make
comparison lists or company reports.
Click “expand” after selecting the companies you want, and you
will the option of creating company comparison reports or multiple
company reports.
AMADEUS
AMADEUS covers over 11 million public and private European and Eastern European
companies, providing up to 10 years of standardized annual accounts, financial ratios,
ownership information and major activities and events. When available, ownership and stock
data is also accessible.
Choose one or more search
criteria in the grid and click on
the blue “search” tab.
You can search my company name,
ticker symbol, industry or a
combination of these, and may elect
to view only public or private
companies, or both.
Assume you’d like to get information on publicly held companies which produce
cheese. You may elect to use the word “cheese”, or you could you use specific
industry codes such as SIC, NAICS and NACE, for which you may use the “look up”
option. Here, we’ve used the word “cheese”, limited our search to publicly held
companies, and specified that we want our results sorted by sales.
We have generated a list of the top publicly held, cheese producing companies, arranged by sales. You now
have the option of viewing individual company reports with or without charts, or viewing a peer report.
Peer reports allow you to compare the companies against the other companies in the same industry.
Select the
company
report tab for
company
reports for the
selected
companies, or
click on the
“E” icon to get
an overview
report with 5
charts.
Select the
Peer Report
tab or the “P”
icon to
generate a
report
allowing
comparison
of companies
within the
group.
Company Websites
Company websites are good places to get information. Remember, as always, there will
be more information on publicly held companies than on private. In general, you can
expect to find:


Links to financial filings. International
companies do not share the same stringent
financial filing requirements as their publicly
held US counterparts. In general, they must
submit detailed annual reports, and less
detailed interim reports. Many countries
have begun to adhere to more rigid and
uniform requirements, but this varies
country by country.
A letter from the CEO; information about the
company’s vision and strategy; a general
picture of the structure and bios of top
management.


General Background Information on the
company such as history, news and product
information, and FAQs.
It is important to remember that the
company website is squarely aimed at
investors and consumers and will put a
positive spin on the company. You must
make sure to balance this information with
that found in independent, unbiased
resources. These resources usually take the
form of articles from newspapers,
magazines and journals, and in analyst
reports when available.
Typical Company Website
Message from the
CEO, mission,
values and
corporate
strategies;
company history,
and management
structure with
brief biographic
information. Also
includes FAQs,
and a corporate
family diaghram.
Information on
products and
brands.
Board of Directors, Corporate calendar,
mode of corporate governance.
Financial Information
Financial data
Annual and
Interim Financial
Reports
Acquisitions
Legal Issues
Investext
Provides research reports (analyst reports) and investment recommendations from Wall St.
and international and US brokerage firms. These reports are great for finding out what’s
happening in company from an objective prospective, and provide investment advise.
For analyst reports on companies and
industries, click on the Research Reports
link.
Type in company name
or search by industry
classification or keyword.
In the region box, you
can limit by country.
You have the option of
limiting the time frame
here.
Typical Analyst Report/Investment Report
Company Overview
Major Products and Services
History
SWOT Analysis: Strengths,
weaknesses, Opportunities and
Threats
Key Competitors
Key Employees and Biographical
Information
Important Trends, Prospects
and Developments within the
Company
Strategic Plans and Financial
Analysis
ISI Emerging Markets
An excellent resource for analyst/investment reports for companies in emerging economies.
Select the
country of
your choice.
In this case,
we’ll select
Mexico.
Enter your company
name, or part of it.
We’ve already selected
Mexico.
Limit the languages to
English if you don’t speak
Spanish.
We’re looking for analyst
reports, so we’ll select
that option.
If you wish, you can limit
by source type, but in this
case you don’t need to.
You may also change the
date range.
Typical results include both company and industry analysis. Simply click on the report you
would like to view.
Journal, Magazine and Newspaper Articles
Very often the bulk of the information that you gather on companies, will be derived from
journal, magazine and newspaper articles. This is especially true in the case of privately held
companies, which are generally not required to make any information available in any
standardized way. In most cases, when looking for information on privately held companies,
articles are the best, or only route to take.
Articles are also very important when doing any type of business research, as usually time is of
the essence. The most recent information will take the form of articles, and very often, unless
you’re doing historical research, the information in books will be too old to be useful.
You will come across different types of articles as you do your research. These are:
○Newspaper Articles
○Scholarly Articles (also known as “academic” or “peer reviewed”)
○Trade Publications: Publications devoted to a specific industry
○Magazine Articles: Articles from publications such as BusinessWeek
The types of articles that you use, will be determined by the type and level of information you
need to find.
ProQuest simultaneously searches a number of databases. You may elect to search a subset of these databases, or
search all of them at once. For company research, it can be helpful to search all the ProQuest databases together, as they
cover not only company, trade and industry issues, but also issues which affect business such as social consequences and
legal matters. To search all ProQuest databases together, click on continue. To select individual databases, click on clear
all databases, and select the one(s) you want by checking the box(es).
You can search ProQuest in a number of ways. The two most popular methods are basic
searches and advanced searches. Basic searches pick up your keywords anywhere in the
article, while advanced searches are limited to selected fields and yield more relevant (but
fewer) results. The default is the basic search, and you may begin by entering your
keywords. To do an advanced search, click on the Advanced tab.
When searching for company information using the Advanced feature, limit the drop
down box to Company/org. This will yield search results in which the company is a/the
major focus of the article.
ProQuest supplies
suggested searches
based on your original
search. Many times
the suggestions are
good, and you may
want to click on any
that seem relevant and
look at the results.
These are typical
results. Just click on
the full text link to
get the article.
You may want to limit
your results to
scholarly (peer
reviewed) articles, or
to trade journals,
newspapers,
magazines or reports.
Just click on the
appropriate tab!
This is a sample of the
results from a search
on Mexico and the
Construction Industry
using the Scholarly
Journal option from
the original result set.
Important: If you
do not see a full
text link, click on
the grey NYU link,
and if full text is
available, you will
be able to access it.
Note: When
researching
companies, it is very
often useful to get
information on the
industry too, as this
sheds light on
business conditions
and on other
companies within the
industry.
After clicking
on the grey
NYU tab on
the first
result, we get
a box which
allows us to
select the full
text of the
article from
two different
vendors. Use
either one
you prefer.
Sometimes, we
do not have
electronic full
text, and in that
case you will be
directed to
BobCat to
check for print
holdings.
EBSCO Business Source Premier
Very similar to ProQuest, but with different publication coverage and some unique features.
Enter your company name, and limit
the drop down box to CO Company
Entity, and hit the search icon.
Notice that you can limit your results to
academic (peer reviewed) journals,
trade publications, newspapers,
industry profiles and SWOT analyses.
These options only appear when they
are available in your search results.
SWOT Analyses: SWOT stands
for “strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats” and are
much sought after by those doing
company research. They sum up
the major problems, successes and
provide insight into what may
happen in the future.
In Conclusion
●We have learned that there are numerous places and resources that can be consulted when performing international
company research.
●There are different types of information available on companies, depending upon whether they are publicly or privately held.
Much more information is available for publicly held companies than for privately held companies, especially when looking for
financial information.
●Articles from journals, magazines and newspapers are invaluable for international company information, but indispensible
for privately held companies, since articles may be the only information available about them.
●Investment/Analyst Reports: Available only for publicly held companies, these are great for detailed analysis, trends and
forecasts.
●Company Websites: These are good places to find information, but it is important to remember that company websites are
aimed squarely at investors and consumers, and will seek to put a positive spin on their company and products. You must be
sure to balance this information with that found in independent, unbiased resources such as articles and analyst reports.
Good Luck with your research!