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9/8/2003 Posted by Penny Scott plscott@usfca.edu

NOTE: The following summary has been edited for a business audience.

Analysts' reports are available online from Investext via aggregator services such as Dialog and others too, and directly from Thomson Financial. Thomson offers subscription products such as Intelliscope and other products/ interfaces and pricing options I use Dialog, DialogSelect, and Thomson Research http://research.thomsonib.com based on my client base needs and to purchase by the page rather than report. The major competitor is Multex. You can purchase reports as needed but need to establish an account.

Investext has company and industry reports, both very useful for business, market, and competitive intelligence research. Multex tends to have reports that are more geared to investors but which are also valuable for business research.

Yes - the reports are fee-based unless you're a customer of a particular brokerage. Some brokerage firms offer free trial accounts and free reports during the trial period.

For a brief description of Investext on Dialog, see http://library.dialog.com/bluesheets/html/bl0545.html. The value of Investext is that you can access hundreds of brokerage houses in one search. There are various cost-effective techniques for using Investext on Dialog that become second nature once learned and I've written several articles and given presentations on this subject over the years. You'll also find articles about Investext and Multex in the professional literature.

Amelia Kassel

Your customer can call the investor relations department of any public company and ask that it send copies of the most recent analyst reports written on the company.

Kip Altman

Yes, analysts' reports are generally for pay and are quite expensive. It looks like you all subscribe to Gale's Business & Company Resource Center. There are Investext analysts' reports in there. Have you used this resource? I also supplement with Value Line, which you also get I think. We subscribe to Investext Plus, which costs an additional $13K or so.

Free on the web is www.corporateinformation.com. There are "analysts" reports from Wright's Investors Service.

Frank Wilmot

Analyst reports from the big brokerage firms like Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, etc are subject to blackout periods (I forget how long) through aggregators like Multex and theMarkets.com unless you have a relationship with them. They are also very expensive. I know that if you do not have an established relationship with these firms, subscriptions to Multex, FirstCall, theMarkets.com, might not be worth it, as you will not get recent timely analyst reports.

John Murphy

Regarding John Murphy's note. We use analysts reports fairly extensively. Generally MOST of the brokerage houses release reports via Thomson's First Call service, pretty quickly, often same day. However, First Call is no longer available for subscription to the general public. For services like Intelliscope, Investext, etc. the embargo on a report generally seems to be anywhere from two weeks to two months.

There are some brokerage houses that make none or very few of their reports available via these services. Goldman Sachs is one who has just starting making a few reports available.

The other thing which is an interesting side note is that while a brokerage house may release a report to a service, they can also have it pulled. So if you get a report today and then go back to get it again in a few months (for some reason) it may or may not be there.....

Mollie Brumbaugh

Analyst reports are produced by investment banks and provide excellent overviews or companies and industries. They are created for investors - but the information is often useful in a business context. There are a variety of places to get them. We use Intelliscope, but you can get them through Investext in Dialog and other sources. Trying to buy them direct from the brokers is expensive - buying them through a third party source - after a two week embargo period, is the most economical alternative.

To find information on stock trends and market prices, it would depend on what specifically the patron is looking for. For example, Valueline can be helpful for specific companies and provide P/E and other ratios, dividend information and so on. Yahoo! has historical stock prices. There is a lot of information available, but you need to find out more specifically what they need.

Scott

Thanks for reminding me about blackouts. During an interview with Investext about 5 years ago, they said embargoes range from a few days to about 6 weeks with an average of 9 days. That can be problematic both for researchers and investors, with a concession that available reports are extremely helpful for a number of business research purposes.

I checked the update for Investext (File 545 on Dialog) and the most recent report in the database is September 3. Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley reports are from September 1. However, Investext does not guarantee that all reports published by brokerage firms are included in their database since brokerage firms don't release all reports to aggregators/distributors.

Goldman Sachs was not listed in the Dialog file although Mollie mentioned they are changing and making some available. This brings up another issue. In the past, different Thomson products have had different offerings. See my article: "Tales of a Searcher's Life: A Comedy of Errors or a Test of Patience?" SEARCHER, the Magazine for Database Professionals, September 2002, pp. 48-52.

For what it's worth, in recent years, the SEC made efforts to change disclosure laws. See, e.g., "SEC says Internet will make investors equal to analysts: A new SEC regulation means that small investors will have access to the same information as Wall Street analysts, thanks to the Internet."

Lack of reports in a database, embargoes, knowing where to find a report, or expensive subscription services are all potential roadblocks to finding just the report you want.

Amelia Kassel