This document outlines how to analyze a company for investment purposes. It discusses gathering basic information like market capitalization, stock price history, and earnings estimates from sources like Yahoo Finance. It also recommends analyzing the company's business overview including its industry, products, customers, and geographic presence. Finally, it suggests performing a fundamental analysis of the company's financial statements and metrics to evaluate performance trends, revenues, profits, expenses, and recent quarterly results from regulatory filings and news releases.

1. How to analyze a company Basic Information Business Overview Fundamental Analysis Comparative Analysis Recent Developments Formulate an Investment Thesis

2. Basic Information First things to Identify Market Capitalization Industry Recent Stock Price 52 Week High/Low YTD Performance Dividends, Dividend Yields Earnings Estimates All of this information can be easily found using basic online services, such as: Yahoo! Finance (finance.yahoo.com) Wall Street Journal Online (www.wsj.com) Moneycentral.msn.com MarketLine – available through your Library account Or, you can use the tools in the Lab Bloomberg Reuters

3. Business Overview What to know: Lines of Business What industry is the company in? Who are its competitors? Business Segments How is the company organized? Major Products / Services What is the company’s competitive advantage? Major Customers Company must list any customers that compose >10% of revenues Geographic presence % of Sales in each geographic region Major Assets

4. Fundamental Analysis Objective is to evaluate the strength of the company Analyze financial statement Analyze financial metrics Identify the trends in the business

5. Things to consider - Basics Revenues Are sales growing? At what rate? Faster or slower than its peers? Compare current quarters with year ago quarterly results Gross Profit Amount of profit before considering administrative and overhead costs Are gross profit margins rising or falling? Gross Profit as a % of sales should be rising as sales increase Operating Profit Evaluate as a % of sales Are SG&A expenses rising or falling as a % of sales.

6. Recent Developments What to know: Results of quarterly reports Read 10Q’s, Company press releases Find this in SEC filings, company websites, Bloomberg, Yahoo!Finance, WSJ.com Management’s Discussion and Analysis section with 10Q’s, 10K’s Compare results with analyst recommendations Company Press Releases Company website, Yahoo!, Bloomberg, WSJ Summarize important news at the company Change in Analyst Recommendations Reuters, Bloomberg, WSJ, Yahoo!