In: Categories » Legal and finance » Stocks and mutual funds » Researching a Company`s SEC Filing
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In the United States, publicly traded companies are required to file business and financial information with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). These reports are entered into a government-sponsored database called EDGAR (www.sec.gov), which stands for Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval. The SEC’s EDGAR service provides downloadable data that can be accessed by individual investors. You also can save SEC reports on a disk and read them at a later time. One disadvantage of this free service is that financial data can’t be downloaded to your spreadsheet program. When you search the EDGAR database, you’re asked for the report number of the document you want. The reports are numbered in the following manner: 10-K reports: Annual reports that include shareholder information covering the firm’s fiscal year 10-Q reports: Quarterly reports that include shareholder information for the firm’s last quarter 8-K reports: Interim reports covering an odd period due to a merger, acquisition, or other event S-1 registration: Forms required for businesses that want to offer stock to the public; often used for initial public offerings S-3 registration: Registration of a secondary offering; necessary form to offer stock to the public after an initial public offering 14-A form: Information about voting matters and candidates seeking election to the board of directors; also called a proxy Annual reports may include more than 50 pages and often exceed 100 pages. For example, the 10-K annual reports include descriptions of the business, business properties, legal proceedings, stockholder voting matters, selected financial data, management’s discussion of the firm’s financial condition and results of operations, financial statements and supplementary data, changes in accounting procedures and financial disclosures, insider transactions, executive compensation, and leasing agreements. Downloading SEC filings in just three clicks When you find the annual report you want, save it to a floppy disk or to your computer’s hard drive. After you download the report and save it on your computer, you can read the file at your leisure. You can also use your word processor’s snappy text-search features to find the important information you need. After you find the report you want, you can save the data in just three clicks: 1. Click the File menu at the top-left corner of your Internet browser screen. 2. Click Save.
3. Enter a name for the file and specify where you want to save the file.
4. Click Save.
To read the file, just start your word-processing program and open the file. If the columns are out of alignment, you may need to adjust the font size for the entire document.
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