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Ramsey Library Research Guides

LexisNexis Academic
Finding Company Financial Information

Please note: While this page still contains some useful information, it is no longer being maintained. For help with LexisNexis or with finding company financial information, please contact the Research Support Desk at 251-6111.

LexisNexis Academic is a special version of LexisNexis for academic libraries. It offers access to news and wire services; company, industry and market information; case law and law reviews; medical news; biographical information, and more.

Getting Started

On the Ramsey Library home page, click By Subject under Electronic Resources. At the top of the page is a list of subject areas; click Business. Click on the link to LexisNexis Academic.

The LexisNexis Academic support site has an excellent "Knowledge Base" Tutorial with the following modules:

  1. Basic Search Steps
  2. Finding information about sources
  3. Searching company names
  4. Searching names of people
  5. Using More Options
  6. Using the Additional Terms field

Everything you need to know to get started is there, with examples and illustrations. We have summarized the most important information here.

Search Categories

The LexisNexis Academic main menu organizes searchable data into 5 broad subject areas: News, Business, Legal Research, Medical, and Reference.
After connecting to Lexis-Nexis, click the Business category: lxnxaumenu1.gif (4410 bytes)

On the next screen, click Company Financial:

lxnxbusmenu.gif (6699 bytes)

The Search Form

Once you have chosen a category, a Search Form appears. On the form below, we have entered Apple Computer as the Company Name and selected Hoover's Company Reports as the Report Type. Click the Search button to retrieve results.

lxnxsrchfrm.gif (7975 bytes)


The Search screens for other categories vary only a little from this basic model. The Examples and Tips buttons conveniently link to information on the same Web page.

The Source menu

On our sample Search Form (above), we selected Hoover's Company Reports from the Source drop-down menu.

Most of the other Lexis-Nexis Search Forms also include a drop-down menu. Whenever you see a textbox with a small down-arrow, like the one shown at right, click it to see available options. Highlight your selection with the mouse and click.
lxnxdropdn.gif (1443 bytes)1. Click
here

lxnxdropdn2.gif (3795 bytes)

 

2. Select
an option

 

[idea graphic]

If you want to know more about what a particular report type includes and get more information about the publisher and coverage dates, click the  Source List button:

lxnxsource.gif (1439 bytes)

After you finish filling in options on the Search Form, Click Search. In our sample search, the result is the latest full-text Hoover's Company Report on Apple Computer. If you need to find more detailed information about Apple Computer, try Disclosure Reports. To find news articles or comparative data, you will need to change to another Lexis-Nexis category.

Selecting Another Search Category

lxnxselectcat.gif (3173 bytes) Available categories are shown on the left side of the screen. Select a Category such as Business News to open a new Search Form.

After the Search Form appears, note that at least one textbox is labeled Required. The required field is related to the type of search and may be a keyword, company name, SIC code, etc. Enter a word or phrase (adjacent words are searched as phrases) in the required field and any additional search terms or critieria in the other textboxes.

In the Business News Search Form, note that the Keyword search includes the headline, lead paragraph(s) and companies discussed in the article. Additional Terms searches the full text. Be sure to select a Date option or type a range of dates to search.

 

For example, you could enter the following search information in the Search Form:

Keyword: Apple Computer
Additional Terms: G4
Limit to articles on: Business & Finance (Select from drop-down menu)
Date: Select Previous Month from the drop-down menu

Click Search to retrieve news articles matching these criteria. A portion of the Search Results screen is shown below:

     lxnxresults.gif (7431 bytes)

Click on an underlined Source, such as PR Newswire (Item 1, above) to view more information about the article and read the full-text.

If you are writing a paper for a management course, be sure to explore other Lexis-Nexis   Business categories, such as

  • Industry & Market News (for recent events or trends)
  • SEC Filings & Reports (for 10K, 10Q, and other reports)
  • Disclosure Reports (more user friendly than SEC filings)

On the main menu, check out:

  • News (for major newspaper and wire service stories)
  • Reference (for Roper Polls and Biographical Information)
  • Directories (for Commerce Business Daily)

What else can you find in Academic Universe?

Lexis-Nexis is not just for business and management research. It also offers full-text resources interest for research in mass communications, economics, law, political science, health and medicine. The current news resources and news archives (twenty years for some titles) will be of interest to everyone. Lexis-Nexis resources include:

  • Wire-service stories from Associated Press Online and other services
  • Major newspapers, including the New York Times back to 1980!
  • Law Reviews with full-text articles
  • Federal and State Court Cases, including federal Tax Court cases
  • Federal Regulations and State Codes
  • Political Transcripts & Testimony

Search Tips

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Scroll below the search box to find important instructions on how to enter complex searches. These instructions are repeated on every Search Form screen.

Search Tips include instructions on how to fill in the Field textboxes on the Search Form,  Field Descriptions for the particular category and General Search Tips for Lexis-Nexis.


Advanced Searching:

Boolean Operators

OR and AND indicate relationships between search terms: Example:
Use OR to broaden a search chicken or poultry
Use AND to narrow a search hotels and gam**ing
Use AND NOT to eliminate terms from a search jordan and syria not michael jordan


Word Proximity and Truncation

Search for: Example:
one word apple
a phrase tax cut
dog bite
a word root economic!  retrieves economic, economics,                     economical, econometric
a wildcard for one or more characters
   (but not as the first character in a word)		 wom*n        retrieves woman or women
gam**ing    [spacer]retrieves gaming or gambling
a word or phrase in a specific field (publication)harvard law review
words in order within n words of each other

words not within n words of each other		 tuition w/3 tax relief

rico not w/5 puerto
both words may appear but not within 5 words
words in the same paragraph
words not in the same paragraph		 marriage w/p tax
income not w/p tax
words in the same sentence
words not in the same sentence		 sanction w/s frivolous
market not w/s share
one word must precede another by n words cable pre/2 television
words must appear at least n times in a single document (n=number from 1 - 255)
(Use this option to find "in depth" articles.)		 atleast3(peace talks) and albright
atleast5(budget) and atleast5(defense)

If you need more help ask a librarian!

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