Business Dynamics II
Company Reports for QVC (and other private companies or subsidiaries)
- MarketLine (Datamonitor) Has reports for both public and private US and foreign companies. Including one for QVC subsidiary of Liberty Media.
- Lexis/Nexis Academic The business tab in Lexis/Nexis has what is called the Company Dossier. It gathers together company reports from other brand name information services such as Hoover's, OneSource.
- Bureau Van Dijk We have a long term trial to ORBIS which provides reports on public and private US and foreign companies. Check it out and let me know what you think. After you authenticate choose ORBIS and the username and password is linda.hauck (case sensative).
Identifying Competitors/Peer Group
Leverage what you learn from company and industry reports to identify competitor and peer firms. You may go beyond the obvious by scanning trade publications and searching business directories by SIC or NAICS codes to identify peers and competitors.
Industry Reports
QVC's industry may be variously described as remote shopping, in home shopping, interactive retailing, nonstore retailing, catalog and mail order (SIC 5961) mail order houses (NAICS 454113), cable and other subscription programming (NAICS 515210) . Additional industry reports can be found on the free web however they are very costly. Nonetheless they may provide useful information in the table of contents or executive summary. At the very least they are an indicator of the value of the subscription resources listed here. As the analyst you have to define QVC's industry.
- MarketReseach.com
- Mintel Oxygen
- MarketInsight (Standard & Poor's)
- MarketLine(Datamonitor)
- Global Market Information Database (Euromonitor)
Financial Information
In the US only publically traded companies are required to file financial statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Thus financial information about private companies or subsidiaries in the U.S. are very limited. You may find news about private company financial performance in the trade literature, voluntarily reported on their web site, reported as s segment on the parents financials statements with the SEC or reported on private company directories such as Hoovers or credit reporting agencies. The following databases provide financial information about companies.
- ValueLine Publically traded
- Morningstar Publically traded
- MarketInsight (S&P) Publically traded
- Mergent Publically traded
- Bureau Van Dijk (trial) Excellent for foreign companies. Should be very helpful for getting financial for foreign peers.
For financial norms of non-SEC filing peers based on IRS filings and credit applications see the following resources:
- BizMiner
- RMA Annual Statement Studies
- Industry Norms and Key Business Ratios: Retailing
- Almanac of Business and Industrial Financial Ratios (Troy)
Misc. Tips
- The 10K or annual report files with the SEC is not only a key resource for company financials. Reading the 10K of your target company or a publically traded competitor is very helpful for doing environmental scans.
- When searching trade news in Lexis/Nexis Academic, ABI Inform, Business & Industry, Business Full Text and Business Source Premier focus your search by using the drop down fields to limit to company or industry and topic (such as leadership or marketing or technology or supply chain).
- Explore trade associations to learn about issues, contact experts or get free data. Electronic Retailing Association
Citing Sources
Using APA Style to cite business articles or trade news is familiar to many. Not so, citing the technical reports and raw data needed for this project. The ALA Style Guide to Electronic References (ironically, only available in print) is probably the best single authority on how to cite reports from MarketLine or Mintel or Market Insight or data series. APAStyle.org provides guidelines without examples. Diana Hacker's Research and Documentation Online offers useful examples of how to cite technical reports and raw data in print.
The elements of a research report citation are as follows:
- Author last name, first initial
- Publication date in parentheses
- Title italics only catitalize first word and proper nouns
- Report number if any in parenthesis
- Retrieved from name of database, subscription database home page URL or URL for free web sites. Include date of retrieval if there is an reasonable expectation that the report will be altered or moved.
Examples:
Souers, M. (2008, September 11). Standard & Poors industry surveys retailing: Specialty. Retrieved from Market Insight.
Datamonitor. (2008, June) Online retail in the United States. (Reference Code 0072-2344) Retrieved from http://www.markelineinfo.com.ps2.villanova.edu/library/Default.aspx.
The elements of data sets:
- Author or compiler
- Date in parenthesis*
- Title
- Description of data type in brackets [balance sheet, income statement, interview]
- Available from denotes download cite not actual data or Retrieved from followed by database name or URL. Include date of retrieval if there is an expectation that the data may be altered or moved.
Examples:
HSN. Inc company financials 2005-2007. (n.d.) [Data file]. Retrieved on March 8, 2009 from Mergent Online.
Standard & Poor's (n.d.) ValueVision Media Inc. profitability [data file]. Available from http://umi.compustat.com.ps2.villanova.edu.
* The APA Style guide generally indicates that this should be publication date. For dynamic data sets and maps, the guide is silent about what date ought to be included here.
