Financial Information
The primary source of financial and other information on U.S. public companies are the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings (EDGAR). The main reports you will be interested in are the annual (10-K) and quarterly (10-Q) statements, and the proxy statements (DEF 14A). In addition to the main SEC Web site, there are several private providers who have added features to make searching and retrieving these filings more user-friendly.
U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (EDGAR)
This is the primary source for all government filings for public companies. Filings are available within 24 hours.
FreeEDGAR.com
Powered by the EDGAR Online subscription service, FreeEDGAR makes it easier to examine the raw SEC filings by indexing them and providing a table of contents. Their “Company Dossier” feature isolates the main elements of the 10-Ks and 10-Qs, and also provides links to value-added content such as insider trades, stock quotes, recent federal litigation, and annual reports, where available. Links are also provided to New York Times news abstracts, investment research reports and credit reports — the full text of which may be purchased.
EdgarScan
EdgarScan pulls EDGAR filings from the SEC’s servers, finds key financial tables and normalizes financials to a common format that is comparable across companies. Using hyperlinks, it goes directly to specific sections of the filing, including the financial statements, footnotes, extracted financial data and computed ratios. A special “Benchmarking Assistant” performs graphical financial benchmarking interactively. Tables showing company comparisons can be downloaded as Excel charts and registered users can store company portfolios for future benchmarking.
SEC Info
This site offers simultaneous searching of the SEC’s EDGAR database and the Canadian Securities Administrators SEDAR database. It can be searched by name, industry, business, SIC code, Zip code and more. SEC Info has added hyperlinks within and between filings to make it easier to retrieve information. It has also extracted and grouped registrants, group members (i.e., related firms), and names (directors, agents, etc.). Free registration is required.
You may want to know more about the different types of SEC filings and what kind of information is contained in each of them. These Web sites can help:
Descriptions of SEC Forms
Morningstar.com: Using the SEC Online
(free registration required)
Daily Stocks
Search by ticker symbol or company name. This site integrates the search engines of many online business information and investment/stock sources so that the viewer can go straight to information on the company requested without re-entering the search. Warning: free BUT lots of pop-up ads!
MoneyChimp: How to Read an Annual Report
Guide to Financials: A Basic Introduction to Reading Financial Statements
Motley Fool: How to Read a Balance Sheet
How to Read a Prospectus: Guide for Beginning Investors
These online guides provide an excellent introduction to deciphering and interpreting the components of corporate annual reports and financial statements.
Annual Report Service
Public Register Annual Report Service
Public Register Annual Report Service offers links to online annual reports and a fill-in form to order free company annual reports to be mailed to you. It also maintains brief financial profiles and press releases on a limited number of companies, and links to other sources of company news and financial information. Free registration is required to view reports online.
Report Gallery links to corporate annual reports posted on corporations’ own Web sites.
Company Annual Reports On Line (CAROL)
Company Annual Reports On Line offers links to online annual reports of many European companies (predominantly British), organized both alphabetically by company name and by industry.
