Company Information: Research Guide
This guide provides an introduction to basic online and print company resources. The guide addresses both public and private companies, including US and international businesses. For additional assistance conducting business research, please contact either the Corporate and Statistical Research Center (662-325-0810 or dlee@library.msstate.edu) or the Reference Department (662-325-7667 or Email a Librarian). Note that access to some of the electronic resources listed below is restricted to MSU affiliated users. (The citizens of Mississippi have access to some of these business resources through the Magnolia project.)
When conducting research on a company, there are some key questions to ask. Answers to these questions will help guide the researcher to the appropriate type of material. Questions include:
- Is the company public or private?
- Is the company headquarters located in the United States? Or is this an international company?
- What type of information do I need? Financial data? Company history? Key competitors?
Related Research Guides: Business Plans, Economics
- Ticker symbols are letters used to uniquely identify a publicly traded company and can be used in a number of business databases to quickly locate company information. Below are some resources, some free and others restricted to MSU users, which will allow you to look up a company ticker symbol.
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- Mergent Online
Available electronically.
** For remote access, you must be affiliated with Mississippi State University.**
- Users may look up ticker symbols of current US public companies. Note that companies that are no longer currently traded are NOT in this database, nor does it provide any international coverage. Use is limited to three concurrent users.
- Yahoo! Finance: Symbol Lookup
- http://finance.yahoo.com/l
- Allows users to get stock quotes by company name or by stock symbol. Also provides links to many other features of Yahoo! Finance.
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Company profiles typically include an analysis of the company, including an overview of products and services, major holdings, key officers, etc.... Some of the resources below are restricted to MSU users. Others may be available to citizens of the state of Mississippi through the Magnolia project.
Online Resources
- Business Source Complete
Available electronically.
** For remote access, you must be affiliated with Mississippi State University.**
- Includes access to over 5000 company profiles from Datamonitor. Over 600 profiles include a "SWOT" analysis. To access the company profiles, select "Company Profile" from the menu, click on the hyperlink for the company and open the pdf "complete report".
- Lexis-Nexis Academic
Available electronically.
** For remote access, you must be affiliated with Mississippi State University.**
- Company information drawn from a number of sources, including Hoover's Company and Industry Reports, Nelson databases (including Nelson Information and Nelson's Public Company Profiles), and the US Business Directory which provides records on over 10 million US public and private companies. (Select Business information and then Company Profiles.)
- Mergent Online
Available electronically.
** For remote access, you must be affiliated with Mississippi State University.**
- Provides company profiles on publicly traded US companies.
- Thomas Register of American Manufacturers (Free registration required.)
http://www.thomasregister.com/
- Users may access the Thomas Register, a directory of US and Canadian manufacturers, including a listing of over 170,000 industrial product and service companies.
- Thomas Global Register (Free registration required.)
http://www.tgrnet.com/
- An online directory providing information on 500,000 manufacturers and distributors from 26 countries classified by 10,500 products and services categories.
Core Print Directories
- Hoover's Handbook of American Business. Austin, TX: Hoover's Business Press.
Ref HG 4057 .A28617 2002 Vol. 1-2 (Low Shelves)
- Covers 750 public US companies. Includes in-depth profiles. Entries include a company overview, key officers, historical and current financial information, and competitors.
- Hoover's Handbook of Emerging Companies. Austin, TX: Hoover's Business Press.
Ref HG 4057 .A28618 2001 (Low Shelves)
- Covers 600 new companies, with in-depth profiles for approximately 200 companies.
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- Hoover's Handbook of Private Companies. Austin, TX: Hoover's Business Press.
Ref HG 4057 .A28616 2001 (Low Shelves)
- Covers over 800 U.S. private companies. Entries provide short narratives, including key financial data (when available), key competitors, and company officers. Selected companies have more in-depth profiles.
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- Hoover's Handbook of World Business. Austin, TX: Hoover's Business Press.
Ref HG 4009 .H66 2001 (Low Shelves)
- Provides profiles of 300 non-US based companies. Company profiles include an overview of the company, a company history, key competitors and company executives, and some financial information.
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Company histories can be found in many of the company profile resources listed above. In addition, some company histories may be obtained by searching the name of the company as a keyword search in the Online Catalog---this will allow the user to locate books about the company in question in the MSU Libraries' monographic collections.
Users might want to browse the MSU Library's collection of Newcomen Society publications. The Newcomen Society is a publicly-supported educational foundation dedicated to the study of American business. The publications series is composed of speeches presented by leading business leaders at Newcomen meetings. The publications are cataloged separately in the MSU Libraries' collection and may be located by conducting a keyword search on "Newcomen Society" in the Online Catalog.
In addition, users looking for historical information about Mississippi companies should contact the Special Collections Department for assistance.
The databases and print reference sources listed above in the Company profile section often includes information about competitors. Other resources that may assist in this type of research include:
- Standard & Poor's Industry Surveys. New York: Standard & Poor's.
Ref HC 106.6 .S74 (Latest issues kept at the Ready Reference Desk)
- The Industry Surveys provide information on selected industries, including information about the dominant companies in each industry. The industry profile includes information on challenges and opportunities facing the industry and key financial data for dominant companies in the industry.
D& B Business Rankings. Bethlehem, PA: Dun & Bradstreet,
Ref HG 4057 .A237 2003 (Low Shelves)
Ranks public and private businesses within industry category and geographic location.
- Market Share Reporter. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.
Ref HF 5410 .M35 2003
- Compilation of market share reports drawn from industry and trade publications.
Financial information is available through the list of databases found in the Company Profile section as well as a number of other sources. Additional information may also be found in the Annual Report section. The following print and electronic resources augment information found in other parts of this guide.
Print Resources: The following titles provide stock and financial information. These titles are located in the Reference Department.
- Mergent Manuals. The Mergent (formerly Moody's) Manuals provide brief descriptions of publicly traded companies and include selected financial information, including balance sheet and income statement data.
Low Shelves:
- Value Line Investment Survey. New York: Value Line.
Ref HG 4501 .V26 (Ready Reference Desk)
- Provides information on over 1700 stocks. Offers screening of over 200 data items for each stock including performance indicators.
Other Resources
- Compustat (Research Insight)
Located on the business research computers in the Reference Department
- Provides extensive financial information on publicly traded companies. Best for long-term analysis, Compustat provides access to a 20 year rolling file of financial data. Users in the MSU College of Business and Industry may arrange with the COBI Systems Office to have the Research Insight software loaded on their office computers. Other users may access this resource in the Reference Department.
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- Yahoo! Finance
http://finance.yahoo.com/
- Provides extensive stock information as well as other key financial ratios.
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- Current annual reports are available from most companies by calling the investor relations department or by visiting the company web site---many companies will post a copy of their latest annual report on their web site. The resources below also provide access to annual reports. Databases listed elsewhere in this guide, including LexisNexis Academic and Mergent Online, also provide access to company annual reports.
- Annual Reports
http://www.annualreports.com
- Contains over 2200 free annual reports, mostly from US companies.
- Corporate Reports Online
http://www.library.upenn.edu/cgi-bin/corprep/recordList
- Developed and maintained by the Lippincott Library at the University of Pennsylvania. Provides access to a collection of historical US annual reports, ranging in date from 1834 to 1968.
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- EDGAR: SEC Filings and Forms
http://www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml
- Provides free access to the SEC's EDGAR database.
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- These resources rank company on a number of criteria, including sales, revenues, employees, etc...
- D& B Business Rankings. Bethlehem, PA: Dun & Bradstreet,
Ref HG 4057 .A237 2003 (Low Shelves)
- Ranks public and private businesses within industry category and geographic location.
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- Fortune Lists: Fortune 500, Fortune 1000, Global 500
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2007/
- The Fortune Lists are available online to individual subscribers only. However, the Mississippi State University Libraries maintains a print subscription to Fortune and the full text of the journal (including published lists) is available in a number of databases: Academic Search Premier (available to both MSU and Magnolia users) and Business Source Premier (available to MSU users.)
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- INC. 500
http://www.inc.com/inc500/
- Top 500 businesses as ranked by Inc. Magazine.
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- The following business databases index journals, magazines, trade publications, and newspapers. Users may also wish to consult some of the general resources available through the Library's Indexes and Databases web page.
- Business Source Complete
Available electronically.
** For remote access, you must be affiliated with Mississippi State University.**
- Indexes over 4,400 business titles, including both trade and scholarly publications. Over 3000 are available full-text.
- LexisNexis Academic
Available electronically.
** For remote access, you must be affiliated with Mississippi State University.**
- Provides full-text documents from over 5,600 news, business, legal, medical, and reference publications.
- Mergent Online
Available electronically.
** For remote access, you must be affiliated with Mississippi State University.**
- Company entries include access to news wire and trade reports on the company in question.
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- Regional Business News
Available electronically.
** For remote access, you must be affiliated with Mississippi State University.**
- Indexes 68 regional business publications, with 53 available full text. Includes full text access to the Mississippi Business Journal, from September 30, 1996 to the present.
- Many of the resources listed in the Company Profiles section (above) allow for some type of geographic search. The following resources deal specifically with Mississippi.
- Harris Directory of Mississippi Manufacturers. Anaheim, CA: Harris INFOsource.
Ref HF 5065 .M7 H37 2002 (Ready Reference Desk)
- Includes a basic statistics section (covering manufacturing statistics for Mississippi), and company listings by the name of the company, geographic location (including city and county listings), industrial product, and foreign trade.
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- Mississippi Business Directory
http://mississippi.bizhwy.com/
- Online directory of businesses in Mississippi, developed by BizHwy.com.
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- Mississippi Business Directory. Omaha, NE: American Business Directories.
Ref HF 5065 .M7 .M57 2003 (Ready Reference Desk)
- Covers over 110,000 business listings by city, yellow page category, major employer, and lists manufacturers by city and product.
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- Mississippi Manufacturers Register. Evanston, ILL: Manufacturers News.
Ref HF 5065 .M7 M58 2002 (Ready Reference Desk)
- Indexes Mississippi businesses by company name, geographical location, primary SIC code, parent company, and includes a county marketing section.
- Many international companies, if traded on a US stock exchange, file annual reports with the SEC (report 20-F). Some of the business databases listed in the company profile section (above) will include international reports and newspapers.
- Global Edge (Michigan State University)
http://globaledge.msu.edu/
- Created and supported by the Center for International Business Education and Research at Michigan State University. Serves as a web portal for material related to international business.
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- Lexis-Nexis Academic
Available electronically.
** For remote access, you must be affiliated with Mississippi State University.**
- Includes access to a number of international directories. (Select Business from the top menu bar.)
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- Mergent International Manual. New York: Mergent.
Ref HG 4009 .M66 (Low Shelves)
- Provides detailed financial information on selected foreign companies. This title is updated by the Mergent International News Reports (Ref HG 4009 .M662).
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This page created and maintained by Deborah Lee, Associate Professor/Coordinator, Corporate and Statistical Research Center.
Created 12/16/03.
