Using business databases with Microsoft Edge on Windows 10

Microsoft Edge is the new, default browser in Windows 10 (top) but Internet Explorer 11 is still available (bottom).

The newly released Windows 10 is a currently a free upgrade from Windows 7 and Windows 8.x. It claims to “transform the way you work and play” amongst other things. It also marks the launch of a new web browser Microsoft Edge, replacing the 20-year old Internet Explorer (IE). Edge is a great move forward for web developers and hopefully will be preferred by end users but, as always, change comes at a cost; the many legacy web-based platforms that were built for IE 6 or later may not work. Fortunately, IE 11 is still available for the sake of compatibility, but is using Windows 10 and multiple web browsers a smooth ride?

How compatible are our business databases with Windows 10?

Some of the specialist financial and business databases that The University of Manchester subscribes to have been tested below.

The desktop search in Windows 10 looks for applications, files, on the web and more.

Not compatible with Microsoft Edge:

ThomsonONE.com and Thomson Research

These two reputable products are widely used but they are built on old technology (old by web development standards). They were already limited to work on Internet Explorer only in Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1.

ThomsonONE.com shows a blank screen if loaded in Microsoft Edge.

Thomson Research will load but some of the dialog windows do not work in Microsoft Edge.

Solution: Click in the new Search box next to the Start button (bottom left of the screen), type “Internet Explorer” and open the old browser. From here, go to the Library website and find ThomsonONE.com in the usual way. (Note, if you try the option to “Open with Internet Explorer” from within Edge may not work for this website.)

Compatible with Microsoft Edge:

So far, I have found that all out other web-based specialist databases are compatible with Microsoft Edge.

Please comment below this post if you find otherwise! I will update this post as necessary.

 

A later post on Business Research Plus will explore databases that use Microsoft Office 2016 and Windows 10.

Current and historical company annual reports

Company websites

For current annual reports, a company’s website is often the quickest and easiest option.

Databases that The University of Manchester subscribes to:

• PI Navigator: Include Annuals / 10K / 20-F (Company Reports and Accounts) in search criteria or select Perfect Filings tab and include Document Type UK Annual Reports or similar depending on your search.
• Mergent Archives: Select Search Mergent Achives for annual report search
• Thomson Research: Quick Company Search: and Content Profile, Filings
• Thomson ONE.com: Annual reports are under Filings tab

Annual reports websites

Try EDGAR for reports filed with US SEC.

Where can I find bond credit ratings for a particular company?

Bond credit ratings are available from several of the databases we subscribe to.

ThomsonONE.com

For S&P, Moody and Fitch ratings on bond issues, use Thomson ONE.com. You can look for one company at a time.

ThomsonONE.com: 1 Select company. 2 Choose Company Views > Deals. 3 Change filter to Product: Bonds. 4 Scroll to Deal Statistics.

Alternatively use Screening & Analsysis to look for multiple companies. Include datatypes SP, MDY, FITCH (all have descriptions Ratings…) in your report.

ThomsonONE.com: Go to Screening & Analysis > Deals & League Tables > Bonds > Advanced Search. Build your search and add

Thomson Research

Fitch ratings are available on Thomson Research. Select Fitch Ratings as contributor.

Thomson Research: search for Contributor: Fitch Reports.

Factiva

Moody’s Investors Service reports are available on Factiva. Search for Moody as source, with company name or upgrade/downgrade in text.

Others

As with Thomson ONE.com, credit ratings are available on Datastream by searching for a company’s bonds and then selecting the relevant datatypes. A similar approach can be taken with Capital IQ.

Note: What is a Corporate Credit rating?

Thomson ONE.com

Thomson ONE.com (or T1.com) is Thomson Reuters replacement product for Thomson One Banker. It covers financial data on over 70,000 active and inactive public quoted companies globally – including key ratios, capital structure, latest deals, top holders and events. Market awareness pages provide quick access to world indices, currencies and key exchange metrics like new highs and new lows, LIBOR, Benchmark bond yields and Treasury rates. Like Thomson One Banker, T1.com also provides access to deep content sets such as Ownership, Deals, Private Equity, plus Company Events.

For researching public (quoted) companies Thomson ONE.com is one the best international company databases available to current staff and students at the University of Manchester. Other databases like Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters Datastream are only available on specific PCs in the library.

If you have used Thomson One Banker before, T1.com gives you an improved interface, additional market awareness and news, and convenient access to analysts’ reports that we previously accessed through Thomson Research. All the Business Research Plus tips for Thomson One Banker and Thomson Research will be relevant to Thomson ONE.com.

Thomson ONE.com company overview (click to expand)

Thomson ONE.com is only compatible with Internet Explorer versions 7, 8 and 9. In IE 10, set to compatibility mode IE 9. For all versions, allow IE to accept pop-ups. Unfortunately Thomson Reuters corporate clients are not pressing the company to make it available on more recent versions of IE. If you fail to allow pop-ups you will get returned to the T1.com home page and have to redo any searching you had started.

Researchers collecting data on large numbers of companies, or over a long time period, may prefer Thomson Reuters more research oriented database Datastream. Similarly, some researchers looking for deals (e.g. mergers and acquisitions) prefer SDC Platinum (also from Thomson Reuters). For a bit more detail see Researching Financial Markets … (June, 2012)

Target Prices – different sources

Professional analysts provide target prices for the companies they research. This information is available at different levels of detail from different sources, and therefore there is not a single source that is always the best when looking for target price data.

“A target price (TP) forecast reflects the analyst’s estimate of the firm’s stock price level in 12 months, providing easy to interpret, direct investment advice.” (Bilinski, Lyssimachou, and Walker, 2013)

Some target price data is freely available online. If you go to uk.finance.yahoo.com for ARM Holdings PLC you will find:

• Mean target price 1,048.28 UK pence (median, high and low is also available)
• Number of Brokers(Analysts) 25

This is for 15 November 2013 when the ARM share price closed at 944 (UK pence). Yahoo Finance UK – ARM.L – Analyst Opinion.

Thomson Research will give you more information behind the analysts’ target prices. It gives you access to the analyst reports that include the reasoning behind target prices. However, this is at the detailed level: the reports describe the target prices of an analyst, or group of analysts. There is no report that describes the consensus target price, such as the ARM mean target price of 1,048.28p (based on 25 detailed broker target prices).

For more detail see Analysts’ Reports on Thomson Research (which unfortunately only works with IE – Internet Explorer).

Thomson Reuters Datastream only gives access to consensus target prices, in contrast to the detailed target prices on Thomson Research. Datastream does give access to historical consensus target prices.

Bloomberg Professional and Thomson One Banker are sources for both consensus and detailed target price data. If you are looking for numbers, rather than the text behind the numbers, for a single company or a small portfolio these are excellent sources.

The best source for researchers who want to study target prices is IBES (I/B/E/S – Insitutional Brokers’ Estimate System) from Thomson Reuters on WRDS (Wharton Research Data Services). WRDS provides access, supporting documentation and online support to several databases used by leading accounting and finance researchers worldwide. Like other databases on WRDS, IBES has an excellent research reputation.

Recent University of Manchester research looked at target prices across 16 countries over 2002-2009 and found that analyst target price forecast accuracy is higher than a naive price forecast. The study identified various factors that affect target price accuracy – forecasts are more accurate in countries with higher accounting disclosure quality (Bilinski, Lyssimachou, and Walker, 2013).

References

Bilinski, P., Lyssimachou, D. and Walker, M. (2013) “Target Price Accuracy: International Evidence”, The Accounting Review, 88(3), pp. 825-851.

Acknowledgements

Target image is from An On-Purpose…On-Target Life for 2013 and Beyond (posted Dec 2012 on Retire Then What? blog)

Best business and management databases

The Cambridge Judge Business School (CJBS) Library recently published a blog post “Top 5 best databases” to highlight their most popular premium databases. It is a great list if you are interested in exploring key University of Manchester database with just a little adjustment to account for differing subscriptions.

• EBSCO Business Source Complete – We have Business Source Premier our largest business journals database with articles covering all aspects of business and management.
  * EBSCO Business Source Premier tips *
• Capital IQ – We have a trial access to Capital IQ (one user access) – [Update June 2014 – Following the successful trial we now have Capital IQ.] There are a range of other databases for researching company and financial market information – see Researching Financial Markets for a summary from a research perspective.
• Factiva – from Dow Jones, Factiva is a great choice for business news – covers the most important newspapers worldwide and a large number of trade journals.
  * Factiva tips *
• Passport (from Euromonitor) – used to be called GMID (Global Market Information Database) then Passport GMID – a great source of global market, industry and country data with an emphasis on consumer goods.
  * Passport (GMID) tips *
• Investext – Investment analysts (brokers) reports available in Thomson ONE.com or  Thomson Research (from Thomson Reuters) – both of these only work in Internet Explorer (see Thomson ONE.com – browser compatibility or  Thomson Research only fully works with IE)
  * Thomson ONE.com Research tips * * Thomson Research tips *

For a fuller list of databases available at University of Manchester browse the business and management pages (LibGuides).

• Resources – Journal articles – Business Source Premier and alternatives
• Resources – Databases – International Companies and Databases – UK Companies – Thomson Research and other company information databases
• Resources – Databases – Business news – Factiva and alternatives
• Resources – Databases – Markets and Sectors – Passport GMID and alternatives

You might also be interested in our getting started guides.

[Medal image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/danjc003/1876117737/]

HP acquisition of Autonomy and a $8.8billion write off

On 20 Nov 2012 Hewlett Packard (HP) announced that it was taking a write off of $8.8 billion of the $11.1 billion that it paid to acquire Autonomy in  October 2010. At the time Automony was a member of the FTSE 100 and seen as a UK technology success story.

There has been lots in the UK financial press since then as HP’s key argument is that they overpaid for Autonomy because of accounting manipulation. This is strongly denied by Automony founder Mike Lynch.

News stories:

• Hewlett-Packard accountants sued over Autonomy purchase (BBC 29 Nov 2012)
• US to probe Autonomy sale to Hewlett-Packard (BBC 27 Dec 2012)
• Autonomy’s Lynch defends record as HP confirms Federal probe (Reuters 28 Dec 2012)

Breaking down a 8.8$ million write off – from Musings on Markets blog (click to expand)

Aswath Damodaran’s Musings on Markets blog makes a strong case that even if HP is right this only accounts for $2.45 billion of the $8.8 billion write off – see HP’s Deal from Hell: The mark-it-up and write-it-down two-step.

The write off raises issues about the acquisition in terms of corporate strategy, leadership, corporate governance as well as the accuracy of Autonomy’s accounts.

Resources for more information:

Thomson One Banker – a deals module search will provide details of the deal: announced 18 Aug 2011, effective 3 Oct 2011, “UK – Hewlett-Packard Vision BV of the Netherlands, a unit of by Hewlett-Packard Co (HP),  completed the tender offer to acquire the entire share capital of Autonomy Corp PLC (Autonomy), a
Cambridge-based developer of infrastructure and information management software, for GBP 25.5 (USD 42.09)” [SDC deal number 2337968040]

[Update June 2014 – Thomson ONE.com is (or T1.com) is Thomson Reuters replacement product for Thomson One Banker.]

Thomson Research – analysts reports – For example, on 23 Aug 2011 Marc Geall of Deutsche Bank published a report on Autonomy Corp plc. This reported a change of recommendation to sell, since the shares were GDP 24.86 almost fully valuing the HP offer, and substantially higher that Deutsche Bank’s fundamental target price of GBP 17.50.

Business Source Premier (EBSCO): – several trade journals with articles on the HP aquisition of Autonomy. For example,

Forbes.com (2012) ‘With Autonomy, H-P Bought An Old-Fashioned Accounting Scandal. Here’s How It Worked’ Forbes.Com, (November 20, 2012):p. 39, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 11 January 2013.

See also those posts with the mergers_and_aquistions tag.

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.

Mergers and Acquisitions Research

Factiva – BAE Systems and FT (click to expand)

The possible merger of BAE Systems and EADS is much reported in the financial press at the moment.

Using the Factiva business news database we can see that there have been almost 100 articles about BAE Systems in the Financial Times alone in the last 3 months (almost all about the proposed merger).

However, there is not yet anything definite. On 12 Sept 2010 BAE Systems issued an official statement.  “Further to the recent movement in BAE Systems’ share price, BAE Systems plc (BAE Systems) and EADS N.V. (EADS) confirm that they are in discussions regarding a possible combination of their businesses. …” (RNS Number 1353M from PI Navigator). There is no specific merger proposal, so there is very little detail that can be recorded in a Merger and Acquisition database.

Thomson Research – Analysts’ reports for BAE Systems (click to expand)

Although the merger is only possible. It is likely to be included in reports be Analysts who follow either of these companies. (Some analysts may delay producing a report until there is a specific merger proposal.)

For more details on Thomson Research see the earlier post Analysts’ Reports on Thomson Research. (Remember Thomson Research only works with IE (internet Explorer)

See also (earlier posts)

• Mergers and acquisitions databases (Nov 2011)
• Researching mergers and acquisitions (Jan 2011)
• Deals info from Thomson One Banker (Mar 2011)

Mergers and acquisition research can involve much more that the financial details of the deals, and remember not all deals are successfully completed.

Update 10 October 2012: EADS and BAE call off merger

• “BAE Systems and EADS announce that they have decided to terminate their discussions” (RNS Number 13955O from PI Navigator).
• EADS, BAE call off world’s biggest arms merger (Thomson Reuters)
• EADS-BAE Pull Plug on Merger Amid Government Opposition (Bloomberg)

Facebook IPO

Today is the Facebook IPO (Initial Public Offering) on the US NASDAQ exchange. Facebook has gone from being a private to a public company offering 421.23 Million shares at $38.00 each.

Information available on Bloomberg includes:

• FB US Equity – Bloomberg Ticker, US30303M1027 – ISIN, 30303M102 – CUSIP, B7TL820 US – SEDOL1, company identifiers from DES (Description)
• GIP (Tick Price Chart) – intra day price chart (at time of writing high $45.00, low $38.00, and average $39.93)
• SEC Form S-1 (Registration Statement) filed 1 Feb 2012 and other filings with the SEC (regulator) – Bloomberg function CF (Company Filings)
• Analysts research (BRC) and estimates (EE)
• and lots and lots of news on Facebook and its IPO

The Bloomberg IPO function shows that Facebook as by far the largest IPO this year.

If you want details of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook shares you need to look at the class-B shares – use Bloomberg’s MSH (Multiple Share Holdings) function.

Thomson Research has 11 analysts reports on Facebook. (See Thompson Research Tips )

Thomson One Banker has details of the Facebook IPO in its deals module (see Deals information from Thomson One Banker ) and financials and financial market info in its company analysis module. [FB-O -TOB Ticker, C901820175- TOB key, 30303M102 – CUSIP, B7TL820 – SEDOL]

For  informed comment on the valuation of Facebook see Facebook and “Field of Dreams”: Hoodies, Hubris and Hoopla from Aswath Damodaran’s Musings on Markets blog.