Research Guides: ITI 220: Retrieving and Evaluating Electronic Information (04:547:220): Company Research

Company Research

The resources below are most useful when you are researching a particular company.

MarketLine
Features company reports that include historical and background information, financial analysis, SWOT analysis, and major competitors.
Select "Companies" on the homepage and type in the name of your company.
Mergent Online
Contains detailed company financial data going back at least 15 years. Search by company or sector to view U.S. competitors in the main search box. Includes links to SEC filings, recent news reports and reports on insider and institutional owners.

ReferenceUSA
Directory database that can be used to locate companies and competitors by industry, location, and size. (e.g. large pharmaceutical companies in NJ).
Listings include internal links to subsidiary and parent companies, as well as lines of business, senior executives and their titles. All directory listings include names, addresses, telephone numbers, and an external link to a local map.

Find Articles

The following databases provide access to thousands of business publications. Finding news and articles about a particular company, industry, or product can provide additional context and access to the most up-to-date information

Business Source Premier
Find articles from a variety of scholarly, professional and trade publications by searching sector, industry or product name keyword(s), or indexed fields such as company, product, NAICS or subject code. Use the filters on the left side of the screen to refine your search.
Factiva
Provides access to thousands of national and international news periodicals, journals and trade publications. Contains full text articles of the The Wall Street Journal. Select the "Companies/Markets" tab at the top of the screen to find financial and stock data about a company.
The Economist
Available via Westlaw Campus Research.
Harvard Business Review
Available via Business Source Premier.
The Wall Street Journal Online
Access full-text news articles, columns, blogs, financial information, videos and more covering topics such as U.S. and world news, politics, technology and health. Also provides the ability to sign up for newsletter alerts.
The New York Times Online
Create a NYTimes.com personal account to gain full access to NYTimes.com and The New York Times app. Also features the ability to sign up for newsletter alerts.

Company forecasts:

When searching any of the above databases, combine a company name or code with subject headings/keywords such as economic indicators, earnings projections, budget figures, price indices, economic predictions, etc. to find out forecast information.
Earnings calls - public company executives hold quarterly earnings/conference calls with analysts, investors and the media to discuss earnings results and answer questions about performance and current/future status. These transcripts are a good way to discover forecast information. They can be found on the "Investor Relations" section of company websites.

Media Alerts

Several Rutgers databases allow the ability to set up news/media alerts, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Access World News and EBSCO (which includes Business Source Premier and Regional Business News). This can be very helpful if tracking a specific company, product or industry.

See the Media Alert Instruction Sheet below for details.

Media Alerts
Guide to setting up news/media alerts.