Reference:ANNUAL REPORTS
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ANNUAL REPORTS
An annual report is the official document sent to a corporation's shareholders detailing the companies' actions and results for the year. It must contain an audited balance sheet and income statement, and may include a statement of cash flow. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires that annual reports be made available to the public if the corporation is a public company. Most public companies will provide you with the annual report, along with recent brochures, press releases, and the 10-K, upon request.
The 10-K is an annual reporting of a company's operations that is required by the SEC. In contrast to the Annual Report, which is usually four-color and quite "slick", the 10-K report is just black and white, and is not as interesting to read. However, the 10-K contains much more detailed information about the company, beyond the balance sheet and profit-and-loss statements, such as officers' salaries and any pending litigation. This report also contains, in Item 7, the Management Discussion and Analysis, which can be very useful in analyzing a company's situation at the time of filing. (Note: Sometimes executive compensation can only be found in the Proxy Statement, which is another filing with the SEC but which is also available through the SEC.)
As of April 4, 2008, paper copies are no longer held in Reserves. Some annual reports can be found on the company's web page, generally under the Investor Relations link.
For historical annual reports on microfiche, see the SEC file. 1977-1987/88 is located at C-506. For years after 1988, see C-2486.
EDGAR (Electronic Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system), the first link below, is an excellent starting point, but you may also want to review these other sites as well:
- http://edgar.sec.gov/cgi-bin/srch-edgar When searching EDGAR make sure to enter the form type that you are looking for, including the dash (for example: 10-K) in the form type window of their search system.
- http://www.prars.com/
- http://www.zpub.com/sf/arl/
- http://www.tenkwizard.com
Lexis-Nexis has corporate annual reports and 10-Ks in their Business section under SEC Filings and Mergent has a tab under their Company information for Annual Reports and/or SEC Filings.
EDGAR 10-K TUTORIAL
For a nice tutorial on searching EDGAR that was put together by the Milner Library at Illinois State University please visit:
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