Researching a UK company - reports and data

What resources are available for researching FirstGroup plc? (who among other things run many of the buses in north Manchester)

Free online resources:

• FirstGroup PLC company website – especially the investor relations section that gives the latest annual report (128 pages).
• Yahoo Finance UK, Google Finance UK,

Library subscribed resources:

• Marketline Company Profile FirstGroup plc from Business Source Premier – 24 pages including key facts, business description, history, key employees, revenue analysis, SWOT analysis
• GlobalData FirstGroup plc (FGP) – Financial and Strategic SWOT Analysis Review July 2012 – an analyst report from Thomson Research – 26 pages – About the company, Company Analysis (including SWOT), Company Financial Ratios, and details of GlobalData and their analysis methodology.
• Key Note Bus & Coach Operators Market Report 2012 from KeyNote – a market research report including a profile of FirstGroup as a key company. (Other KeyNote market reports include Rail Travel 2011 and KeyNote company information provides five years of company accounts.)
• 7 Economist articles (since 2001) and over 500 Financial Times articles – both from ABI/Inform (Proquest) .
• 10 years of FirstGroup accounts through Fame – a database based on accounts filed at UK Companies House with additional information on shareholders and subsidiaries.

In summary, the library subscribed resources provide access to reports that would be expensive to buy (investment analysts and market research reports) and databases that provide more flexible search and download facilities than free online resources.

If the above library resources are not enough, there are plenty more:

• Thomson Research has a total of 256 analyst reports on FirstGroup plc published in the last 2 years. These are valuable reports and not easily found with a google search – see Analysts reports on Thomson Research.
• Factiva has 2,176 news stories from the last 6 months – including over 100 from the Financial Times.
  Dow Jones Company Report FirstGroup plc – from Factiva – 15 pages – company overview and financials (balance sheet, cash flow and income statement) for last 5 years.
• Thomson One Banker provides financial market information: overview, prices, financials, estimates, deals (e.g mergers and acquisitions), ownership and comparables.
• ORBIS is similar to Fame except that it covers the largest 230,000 companies worldwide (Fame is UK and Ireland only) so you can compare FirstGroup with similar companies worldwide.
• Bloomberg Professional provides financial market information and  business news – the DES (description) function provides a brief overview report.

This post applies advice from previous posts to a specific company: How to Research UK Company Data, Company Financial Analysis (Global Companies), and How to Research Global Company Data.