INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH INSIGHT

Research Insight is a database published by Standard & Poor that contains up to 20 years of financial data for thousands of publicly traded domestic corporations.

· Provides you with in depth financial and market data on more than 12,000 companies in more than 70 countries world wide.

· Based off of Compustat which is the oldest worldwide financial data collection and has been setting standards since 1962.

· Annual financial data for up to 20 years and quarterly financial data for 12 years.

· Complete histories including income statements, balance sheets and market data.

At the Jones School, Research Insight is installed on the network and can be accessed from PC’s at the BIC and the Finance Center.

Research Insight (RI) can be run directly, or through Microsoft Excel. Since, we would need to export information; we will look at using RI through Microsoft Excel.

USING RESEARCH INSIGHT

The welcome to research insight is your entry to the basic functions of Research Insight.

Research Assistant: Allows you to search (screen) the databases for companies that meet specific criteria.

Report and Chart Assistant: Allows you to create custom reports and charts.

Open Report/Open Chart: Allows you to open predefined reports, screens, charts and sets.

Starting S&P Research Insight in Excel

Start Microsoft Excel. (Go to Start | Programs and select Microsoft Excel.) Look for the S&P menu item on the top toolbar. If it is there, S&P Research Insight is available in Excel on that PC. Otherwise, choose Tools | Add-In, and check to see if it is already in the add-in list. It should show up in the add-in list as “SPRI80 Version 7.8”. If you do not see it, click on browse, and go to the C: drive, select the Program Files folder. Select the Research Insight folder. Select the Excel folder. Select Spri80 and click “OK”. In your add-in menu, you will see “SPRI80 version 7.8”. Click “OK”. This will show up in an Excel menu as “S&P”

Using Built-In Report Templates with Research Insight Wizards

The best way to get information from RI is to use one of its dozens of built-in reports.

1. Start Excel. Select the S&P menu and select Welcome to Research Insight. Alternatively, if the SPWS toolbar is present, click on the S&P Research Insight Wizards icon (looks like a hand-shake).

2. Click Open Reports. You should see a list of built-in reports, organized into folders (such as Compustat Reports, Balance Sheets, Cash Flow Statement, etc.). Select the report you want (e.g., Annual Balance Sheet—5 Years). Click Finish.

3. In the next screen, in the space for Companies, enter the ticker symbol for the company or companies you want the report for, separated by commas. The first time you use the report, you should just enter one ticker. You can experiment with multiple tickers later. You can also use the Lookup wizard to look up and enter a ticker symbol. Click OK.

4. You should now see the report in an Excel sheet. If you entered multiple tickers, you will also see a selection bar at the top with the company name shown. Using the drop-down arrow in that box, you can view the report for the other companies you had requested.

Modifying Your Report for Additional Companies or Time Periods

Once you have created a report, you can change the company or the time period. Select S&P menu and select Run Assistant. You will see the screen with multiple tabs, where you can enter new company symbols and change the time periods covered by the report.

Compare financials with competitors

Click on Run Assistant within the S&P tool bar. Enter the ticker for your company. Select your criteria for selection under the Find Similar Companies window. Now, go to the ‘Set’ tab. To narrow your set of companies, double click on the companies you do not want in your set. This will remove those companies from your set. Click OK

Storing Multiple Reports in the Same Spreadsheet

If you prefer, you can create additional reports using the Research Insight Wizard in the same spreadsheet. Each new report will show up as a new tab in the spreadsheet. You can thus have all the reports you need for a company saved to a single spreadsheet. If you want each report in a new spreadsheet, just click on New Blank Document icon in the main toolbar before starting a new report.

Saving the Data to your Disk

Before saving the report, you must first “unlink” the formulas in the

spreadsheet from the Compustat Research Insight database. (Otherwise you will just be storing formulas, which won’t help much when you open the spreadsheet in a PC that doesn’t have the Compustat database.) Select S&P menu and select Break Arrays. (Alternatively, if the SPWS toolbar is present, click on the Unlink Arrays icon (looks like a broken chain link). If you had created more than one report (as tabs) in the spreadsheet, you must do this unlinking separately for each of the tabs in the spreadsheet before saving the spreadsheet as a file.

Using Report Assistant to Create Your Own Reports

After you become familiar with using the built-in reports of Research Insight, you might want to try out creating your own report using the S&P Report Assistant menu. Reports in Research Insight are just two-dimensional tables of data. But you have three choices on what goes into rows and columns – data items, companies, or time periods. In choosing a report format, you need to decide which of these three goes into rows and which one goes into columns. As an example, you can choose to have data items on left and companies as columns, all for the current period. As another example, you can have a report with historical time-series data for companies on left and time periods as columns, all for a single data item.

1. Start Excel. Select the S&P menu and select Report Assistant. (Or click the S&P Research Insight Wizards icon in the SPWS toolbar and choose Report Assistant.)

2. Choose the report format you want. (See my description of report formats above.)

3. Click Next, and choose the data you want from the various Item Groups and the Items listed. Click on the Add button to add the item(s) you selected to your report. You can also extract additional information through the Look up menu within this window. (For instance, if you need LIFR for 20 companies, click on Look up, select Balance Sheet supp from the Item categories, and select LIFO Reserve from the items, Click paste, Click Finish)

4. Click Next. Select the starting time period or the time periods for the report. Also read and select the appropriate Alignment Option for the time period you want data in.

5. Click Finish. Put in ticker symbol of your company in the box Companies. Click OK.

6. You should see the report in an Excel sheet now. If you entered multiple tickers, you should also see a selection bar at the top with the company name shown. Using the drop-down arrow in that box, you can view the report for the other companies you had requested.

Missing Data Item Codes

Data are updated quarterly. Hence there may not be data for the most recent quarter or two. The following are some common missing data codes.

Code Description

@AF Annual Figure (only annual data is available for quarterly items). Applies only to the COMPUSTAT (North America) database.

@CF Combined Figure (the figure is combined in another item)

@IF Insignificant Figure (the number is immaterial)

@NA Not Available (company does not disclose information about the item)

@NC Not Calculable (rules for calculation were not met)

@NM Not Meaningful (item is not meaningful for a company)

@SF Semi-annual Figure (only semi-annual data is available for quarterly items). Applies only to the COMPUSTAT (North America) database.

@XE Not Available Currency (currency exchange rate is not available to translate data);

applies only to the COMPUSTAT (Global) database

EXAMPLES OF USAGE.

1. To download last 10 years Balance Sheet.

-Open Excel.

-Click on Welcome menu on the S&P toolbar

- Select Open Report

-Select Balance Sheets and then Annual Balance Sheet-11 years. Click Finish

- In the Run Assistant window, type in single/multiple tickers. Click OK

- Prior to saving your excel sheet de-link values from the S & P tool bar.

2. Comparisons with industry.

- Open Excel. Click on Welcome menu on the S&P toolbar.

- Select Research Assistant. Type in ticker for your company. Select Industry sector. Click next. Remove companies you do not want.

- Click next. Select Report Assistant. Click next.

- Select report type. Select items and click on the Add button. Click Finish.

Note: To access ‘help’, you need to open Research Insight directly (i.e. without going into excel). Close the welcome window and click on the help button on the toolbar.

Within help, select data definitions.