Company & Industry Information: Public Companies

> MarketLine Advantage offers reports on over 100,000 companies from all over the world.  Company reports vary in size and content, but many are quite extensive and include Key Competitors, a SWOT Analysis, Company Histories, and key employees and biographies.

Select Company Profiles from the search box drop down menu and navigate to the Company page which links to the basic profile and much more.

> Nexis Uni (formerly Lexis-Nexis Academic) contains a wealth of company information from a variety of sources (MarketLine, Hoover's, and more), but it can be challenging to locate it all.

Start your search for company information in the Company Dossier.  There is a vast amount of company information linked from within the  Dossier, so don't stop by viewing the first Company Snapshot screen.  Explore the option on the left navigation bar, including Brands, Competitors, Financial Overview, Investment Research, and Additional Company Reports.

> In Business Source Complete, basic company information can be found by clicking on Company Information on the top navigation bar and entering the name of a company.  

In the Nexis Uni database, balance sheet financials and ratios for any group of publicly traded companies can be compared by searching in the Company Dossier portion of the site.

1. Click on the down arrow next to Menu to select the Company Dossier link.
2. Click on the Company tab and then select Compare Companies.
3. Key in ticker symbols or names for as many companies as you want to compare.
4. Retrieve a Company Financial Comparison giving balance sheet and income statement items, followed by the header Ratio Analysis with a long list of ratios.  

NOTE: This will work best with companies who are direct competitors in the industry (i.e. they have the same primary NAICS code that your company has). Comparing two companies with diversified operations may be of limited value. For example, Apple and Motorola are competing for mobile phone business; but each one competes in a good many other product markets as well. So ratios for the whole company do not give a very clear or complete picture of how they fare in the cell phone market.