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Company Research

Provides information on conducting research on publicly and privately owned companies. Includes resources for finding company profiles, annual reports, and SEC filings (10-K, 10-Q).

Getting Started

Company research involves the intersection of various types of information to analyze the organizational structure, performance, trends, and issues facing companies. When performing company research, it is important to know whether or not a company is public or private as this will impact the availability of information about the company.

  • Public Companies - These companies are publicly traded through the free trade of stocks on various stock exchanges. Public companies generally have more information available due their requirements for reporting to entities such as the SEC.
  • Private Companies - These companies generally have less information available as they are not held to the same reporting standards as public companies. If information is available from a private company, it is often voluntarily made available by the company. When researching a private company, it may be helpful to also look at public companies within a similar industry to the private company in question.

Directories

Directories serve as a good starting point to begin researching a company. They generally provide information on a company's size, organizational structure, industry codes, and individual locations.

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