Jackson Library

Searching the industry

Industry overviews in S&P Industry Surveys in the JL Reference Room include: Current Environment; Industry Profile including trends and how the industry operates; Key Industry Ratios & Statistics; and the keys to analyzing a company in this industry. An e-version of the Industry surveys is available in Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage (JL).

OneSource's Business Browser (JL) integrates information from over 2,500 business sources. The industry Profiles can include Market Research reports, Analyst Reports, Industry Norms, and articles. Financial data on the companies in the industries can be downloaded into Excel.

ValuationResources.com (I) Industry Resources Reports list resources available from trade associations, industry publications, and research firms which address subjects such as industry overview, issues, trends, and outlook, financial benchmarking, compensation surveys, and valuation resources. Reports are available for more than 220 industries.

Yahoo Finance Industry Center (I) has industry profiles and extensive financial data on the industry and the public companies in the industry. Some of the charts can be downloaded into Excel.

Searching lists of interesting companies

Magazine lists can provide ideas of the top players in a particular industry or the fastest growing industries e.g. Inc 500 Fastest Growing Companies, Forbes 200 Best Small Companies, Hispanic Business Fastest Growing 100. [ PDF 57KB]

Lists of special issues can be found in special issues guides at the Information Desk (JL).

Price's List of Lists (I) The List of Lists is a database of ranked listings of companies, people and resources freely available on the Internet. Content comes from a number of sources including: Specialissues.com, Gary Price's "ResourceShelf" and individual users of the List Of Lists.

Searching cases

Cases can be good sources for industry ideas. You can find some cases in Business Source Completedatabase. (JL, A)

Harvard Business School Publishing is the main source for purchasing cases. Many Stanford cases are available there and others can be purchased through the Stanford case web site.

Suggestion: Someone who built a traditional business in a traditional industry, e.g. vacuum cleaners

Industry Financial Performance

A number of sources provide financial benchmarks and ratios including the following:

OneSource's Business Browser (JL) allows you to choose a set of companies and a set of financial data and download the results into Excel.

RMA Annual Statement Studies (JL) in the Reference Room gives standard ratios by industry based on the size of the company.

ValuationResources.com (I)provides a comprehensive list of the sources available for financial benchmarking. It includes both general sources and links to specific industry resources with the costs of each.

Many business and trade journals provide list of industry leaders with their financial performance e.g. InformationWeek 500 (I); industry leaders in BusinessWeek 'Corporate Scoreboard (JL)' and Mergent Industry Review (JL). Tablebase (JL, A)includes lists of industry leading companies from various sources.

Suggestion: use metrics such as growth, profitability, cap expenditures ratio, revenue per employee, etc. to rank industries and companies.

Screening firms by financial criteria

You can run screens on several databases that generate lists of companies that meet several key criteria

Data on both public and private firms can be found in both Million $ Database (JL) and Reference USA (JL, A).

Compustat (JL), OneSource's Business Browser (JL), and Thomson One Banker Analytics (JL) cover only public companies, but have much more detail.

Example: Generate a list of media companies in the Bay Area with revenue between $200M and $800M and EBITA growth over 20%.

Evaluating specific companies

For comprehensive company financial analysis Thomson Research (JL), Thomson One Banker Analytics (JL), Compustat (JL), and Thomson Investext (JL) are all excellent. Valuation Resources (I) and Yahoo Finance (I) are less comprehensive but available on the web. Both ABI Inform (JL, A) and Business Source Complete (JL, A) have articles on companies and Business Source Complete has some Datamonitor company reports

Names and Addresses of Executives

There are executive directories in Million $ Database (JL) Hoover's Online (JL), Reference USA (JL, A), S&P Register (JL), and the D&B Reference Book of Corporate Managements (JL).

OneSource's Business Browser (JL) allows you to search for executives by position, geographic location, and education institution among other characteristics.