Where to Start Researching a Company

Locating Company Information and Starting the Search

Depending on the type of company you are researching locating company information that may be used in a campaign be relatively easy thanks to the wealth of information available on the internet. To save you heartache it is important to know at the start that you can generally locate more detailed information about public companies.

Public companies are companies that are listed on the stock exchange and allow members of the public to be shareholders. Obtaining information for private companies and not for profit (that is non-listed companies) is more difficult and less information is available because they are generally not required to disclose information about their businesses.

Finding Out if a Company is Public or Private

One of the easiest ways of finding out whether an Australian company is a publicly listed company or not is to check with the Australian Stock Exchange. A public company is one that members of the public can invest in and as such is required to make public an annual report to its shareholders each financial year. If a company is not listed it may be a private or not for profit company or a subsidiary of another company.

After you have established whether it is public or private there are some basic steps you can follow to build a profile of your target company:

Locating General Information About the Company and the industry it operates in

Good sources include investment reports and other industry/financial publications, eg The Australian Financial Review Shareholder, BRW lists.

When you are constructing a company profile you want to answer some basic questions about the company, which may include:

• What does the company structure look like? Who are the managers, directors, shareholders or major funding sources? Are there subsidiary companies or other companies/ organisations that are linked?
• Indications of where the company is headed - is it expanding or contracting its operations?
• Who are the company's main competitors and where are its major markets? What is the importance of this for workers at the company? What share of the total market for goods and labour in the region and the country does the company account for?
• What does the company's financial position look like? What is happening to profits, cash flow, revenue, return on shares and debt over time and is this different for different parts of the business? Where are the growth parts of the business and which areas are in decline? What are the predictions for profit for the next year? How does the company intend to increase its profit?

Visit the Company's web page and collect information or get a copy of the company's annual report

You can often download a copy of the annual report and other financial documents, media releases, product information and shareholder information from a company's web site.

Annual reports contain a range of useful information about companies. These are often available from a company's web site however, you can also get a copy of the annual report by ringing the company's head office and asking for one to be sent to you.

The annual report is one of the most useful pieces of information you can get about the company because they can tell you:

• How much profit the company made and where this came from, eg which divisions of the company made the most money and comparisons over time - has the company become more profitable
• Subsidiaries of the company and joint ventures the company is involved in - where else the company has interests - can provide other useful points of leverage.
• The names and details of the directors and largest shareholders
• The names and details of the company's management team.
• Overview of the company's operations including the performance of individual properties and divisions
• Remuneration of directors and executives - this is located in the financial statements at the end of the annual report (also check to see if executives were given loans from the loans or other incentives)

As the name suggests annual reports are released once a year, but the company will also release a mid year financial report.

Find recent news stories about the company

You can either trawl through the major papers regularly and collect articles or most newspaper web sites allow you to search their archives for recent articles. You can also have a look at recent company announcements from the ASIC site.

Find recent legal proceedings that the company was involved in

You can look at material produced by legal publishing houses like CCH or at legal websites like Austlii to locate cases and decisions.

Do a general search of the web on the company's name using a general search engine

This is a more random search technique but one that could throw up material that you don't get from other searches. Using the Web To Research Companies - Some Caveats The Web is rich in resources for company research but certain caveats apply:

1. Information on publicly-traded companies is more available than information on private ones. This holds true for any mode of company research -- print or electronic, commercial or free.
2. While the Web is good for tracking the current activities of a company, there is limited historical material available in this medium.
3. In this subject area more than most, many information providers are testing the waters and what is free today, may cost money tomorrow. In fact, some of the sites offer a range of services -- some free, some subscription, some pay-per-view.

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Locating Company Annual Reports
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