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Financial Information : Analyst Reports 101

This guide has links to subscription databases and Internet Websites that provide financial information (income statements, stock histories and much more) for companies and industries.

Simple primer on Analyst Reports

What is an ANALYST REPORT?

1. Analyst reports go by many names:

  • Analyst reports
  • Broker reports
  • Broker Research, Broker Research reports
  • Equity Research, Equity Research reports, Equity reports
  • just “Research”

Preferred name: Analyst Reports, which differentiates them from Market Research reports

2. Analyst reports are published by investment banks

  • Examples of big investment banks are RBC Capital Markets, Deutsche Bank, TD Securities, and Morgan Stanley

3. Investment banks employ financial analysts

  • Financial professionals who are experts in evaluating companies
  • They analyze companies in different industries and then recommend whether to "buy", "sell" or "hold" the stock
  • One analyst will usually “cover” 20-30+ companies in a sector
  • These professionals go by many names:
    • Financial analysts
    • Brokers, Equity analysts
    • Security analysts

Preferred name: Financial Analysts or just Analysts for short

3 types of analyst reports and why they are useful

Company analyst reports
Usually published quarterly. Focused on financial performance and include a lot of numbers. The good stuff lies in the qualitative analysis. They often discuss the reasons why a company has preformed well, or missed it’s financial targets. It might discuss big trends affecting that company, or strategic events happening around it
 

Industry analyst reports
•Published irregularly. May be weekly, monthly, quarterly, but are more often 1-2 times per year
•Are awesome because in addition to the financial analysis, they include detailed analysis on the whole industry. They will often discuss market sizes, shares, trends, what technologies are disrupting the industry, what is dying. They are really informative documents
 

Initiating coverage reports
This is the FIRST report published by an analyst on a company. Because it is the analysts' first assessment of the company, these are usually in-depth reports. They are comprehensive, covering an entire company from top to bottom in terms of strategic topics, trends, competitors, market shares. These are usually the one of the BEST reports for students when researching their topics

Sheridan Library databases that include analyst reports