Finding Financial Reports

Finding Financial Reports

3 Main Reports

Before we do that, let's discuss the three main financial reports that you'll encounter.

A 10-Q is a company's quarterly report, 10-K is an annual report, and an 8K is a general news release abroad forum to notify investors of any event, including an earnings release, acquisition, dividend and so on and so forth. It could be any news that the company wants to inform investors up.

3 Methods for Reports

Now, with that in mind, let's look at three methods to find company financial statements.

Investor Relations

First, the company's investor relations website. Which you can just go to Google and type in AAPL, Apple's ticker. Investor Relations. Go into the first link in Google. I get to news and releases and if I scroll down, I could get to their financial data. Here I see their crop, their quarterly earnings reports, and if I go to 2019 I could see also their 10-K and the three other 10-Q.

So a 10-Q will be filed three times a year and the fourth report will be a 10-K. So if I hit on this year, I will get to Apple's 10-Q. Now as we discuss in a different video, the main three financial statements are the income statement, which shows a company's profit or loss over a period of time. Their balance sheet, which shows the assets, liabilities, and shareholders' equity and the statement of cash flows, which is a reconciliation of a company's cash over a period of time.

That's a separate lesson.

So if the companies are on a company's investor relations section, you could find their financial statements very easy to do. You could just Google it and you will find their financial data as well as some other reports.

Aggregators

The next method would be to use some sort of aggregation to a like a BAMSEC. BAMSEC.com is my personal favorite. And I'm going to show you some features you can use in BAMSEC if I go to BAMSEC.com and I type in AAPL.

The nice thing about Bam SEC is they organized the financial releases into categories, here are their latest financial reports. Here's the latest news that eight case prospectuses, properties, and so on and so forth. You can also see the find out all their releases chronologically. And there's also another tab for transcripts.

Those are transcripts usually up after every earnings release. Management will get on a phone call with financial analysts and investors to discuss the quarter. There are also special events. So basically this will aggregate transcripts. This is a feature available in the premium Bam SEC subscription.

Now, if I click into the financials, I can scroll down and I'll show you a couple of features here that are really good. So here's the income statement. One thing you could do very quickly and easily is download this to Excel. Saving a ton of time, inputting data in a minute. Here it'll pop up. And you can see how nice and easy it's formatted and Excel. And if you click the source, you'll be taken right back to that financial statement. So you'll never have to go searching for it again. It'll be very easy to find it. Another thing you could do is click on the similar tables and these features are all premium features.

And you could see the same report over different periods very easily, sure enough, to go back and forth and try to track down a different report in a different period. Another feature I really like about Bam SEC is the ability to highlight a number and then create a link.

Now, if I copy that link, I had control C to copy and paste it. Control V. I could share that link with someone, and if they paste that link into a browser, click on that link. It goes not only to that financial statement but directly to that number in the financial statements. So you could take someone or you could footnote your work and always remember where you got a specific number. That's the benefit of using an aggregation tool like a BAM SEC.

SEC Site

Now the third and not the final way, there are many ways to get financial statements, but a third method is to go and it's more of the old school method is to go to the SEC website. Now, I don't use this much personally, but this is technically where everything has to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

So I go to SEC.gov. And I go to filings and I go to company filing search. I'll search by company. And here I have a little fast search. I'll type in AAPL and it is generally harder to navigate this site, which is why I don't use it. And if I scroll down, I could go to the latest 10-Q here.

And I get the actual 10Q right there. And I'll get to the same quarterly financial report that I got through Bam, SEC, or the company's investor relations site, but it is a little harder to navigate this site. So it's something I typically don't you know, I don't do myself, but the data is there and it is free. So you could get a company's financial report directly from the S.E.C. Web site searching by the ticker and then looking through all the reports. It's not organized that well, but it is there.

Recap

So to recap, there are three major types of reports, a 10-K, 10-Q, and an 8-K, and you could find those reports on a company's investor relations site. Just Googling it. You could use an aggregation tool or you could get it from the SEC website.

More Free Investing & Finance Resources

If you really want to value a company properly you have to look at a wide range of metrics ratios and financial modeling, I definitely recommend looking into other videos and tutorials that we have on topics like dividend yields, DCF valuation, and financial accounting to get a complete picture on a company's valuation and prospects.

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