Maybe you’re hoping to sell into a big business. Maybe you’re applying for a new job. Maybe you’re trying to find operating statistics on a competitor. Or maybe you’re just curious about your friendly neighborhood conglomerate. In any case, there’s a wealth of enlightening information to be found on public companies via the Securities and Exchange Commission, and you can get it for free online.
Public companies, as you know, sell shares of their stock to anybody interested in buying them. Because their shares are open to the public, these companies have to make certain financial information publicly available. They file this info with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the SEC houses it.
You can search these SEC holdings for free with EDGAR. This database is a primary source, and lists everything a company files – which is often confusing, misleading, overwhelming, and terrifying. But still, there’s good information to be had here, if you know where to look.
So where should you look?
Start with the EDGAR home page. You’ll find a link to a Quick EDGAR Tutorial and a Description of SEC Forms (a mind-numbing but useful 46 pages describing all the different filings in EDGAR). To actually begin your search, though, click “Search for Company Filings” and then “Companies and Other Filers.” This will bring you to the Company Search page.
Search by company name or ticker symbol. Here’s a search for Fedex.
In the upper-left corner you’ll see the company name. Below that is the SIC code assigned to the company (click it to see filings from other public companies operating in the same industry), and the state in which the company is headquartered. The actual SEC filings for the company are shown in the table below, with columns for form number, form format, filing description, and filing date.
You’ll see a lot of “Form 4”s and “Form SC 13G”s. I’ll be honest: There may be good information to be had from these, but I don’t know what it would be. Suffice it to say that there’s a lot of chaff to sort through on this site.
So where’s the wheat? The forms I’ve found to be of excellent value are the 10-Qs, which are quarterly financial reports; 8-Ks, which are current notes such as press releases; and 10-Ks, which are full annual reports. Proxy statements can also be useful for executive information. These reports and forms are all highly statistical in nature – and can take some digging through – but within them you’ll find:
Statements of income, which include operating expenses and operating income. ($ in millions)
Balance sheets, which include data on assets and liabilities.
Cash flows, which include income and financing information.
Management’s discussion and analysis, which can provide insight into future company direction as well as further analysis of operations - including such solid gold as “sales by segment or product"...
...and “potential market risks.”
Executive information, giving names of officers and those on governing boards, along with salaries and other compensation information.
This data is highly current (most info is updated quarterly), trustworthy (financials are audited by third party accountants), highly detailed (one could totally geek out on this stuff) and free. So there you go.
If you’ve come this far in your public company research, you might take one further step and also consider a company’s glossy annual report. In addition to the statistic-heavy SEC 10-Ks, public companies will often also produce a more reader-friendly, marketing-laden annual report for their shareholders. These are often good sources for company outlooks, threat analyses, and more easily digestible financial data. Find such a report by visiting the company’s Web site and looking for a link to “Investor Relations.”
As always, drop us a line or leave a comment if you have any questions – and good luck with that big sale / new job / competitive intelligence / conglomerate tracking / public company research!
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