The movers already got to work on Thursday by moving all of the furniture out of the staff area.

We will keep you updated on the progress throughout the summer. Please excuse the noise and dust while construction is taking place!

The cartoon character Dogbert gives this advice to the Boss:

“It’s easy to create a strategy – Write down everything you do preceded by the phrase Increase our Market Share by.”

Creating strategy a la Dogbert is easy. Finding market share data can be tough.

Market share is the percentage of a market, usually defined in units or in revenue, accounted for by a company, a brand, a product, a commodity, or an institution.  The market can be defined geographically, as broadly as the entire world or as narrowly as a zip code. Market share figures are usually calculated for the year, but some industries require more frequent updates. For example, the publication MusicWeek gives weekly market shares by corporate group for artists’ singles and albums. In addition, we may want historical time series or a projection of market share data. The number of potential requests for specific combinations of products, companies, geography and time is almost endless.

Here are some sources for market share data.

Bloomberg

Bloomberg’s industry surveys module is a good source for market share data for more than one hundred industry groups. The screen below shows market share data for North American Passenger Airlines. Use the command BI <GO> to access Bloomberg Industries. Select an industry and then click on “Market Share” from the left-hand menu. Bloomberg is available at the Lippincott Library and Huntsman Hall.

Note that passenger airlines have their own unique market share metric “Revenue Passenger Kilometers”

Market Share Reporter

Published as an annual printed volume for more than 20 years, Market Share Reporter is now also available as an e-book. Covering thousands of companies, brands and services, Market Share Reporter combs the business literature for data.  Because of this, its contents reflect what is popular and topical. There is usually a lag of a year or more before data is reported. The printed version of the Reporter is useful for its bibliography of more than 2,000 primary and secondary sources. The report below is from the 2013 e-book version.

Carbonated Soft Drink Sales, 2007-2011

2007                14.66
2008                14.24
2009                13.91
2010                13.80
2011                13.50

Source: Beverage World, May 2012, p. 27 from Beverage Marketing Corp.

Passport GMID 

Passport GMID is Euromonitor International’s global market analysis platform for industry research. The database monitors industry trends and is a key source for market share and market size data for 20+ industries in 80 countries world-wide. To find market size or market share data for a particular company or brand, begin by clicking on Search in the top toolbar. Select your industry of interest from the category tree. Select a broad category like Alcoholic Drinks or one of its sub-categories (e.g. Beer, Cider/Perry, Wine, etc.). Choose your Geography and Run Search. The results will include statistics like Market Size, Company Shares, Brand Shares, Distribution, Imports/Exports, Pricing, and more. Below is an excerpt from the Brand Shares chart for the Australian wine industry.

Market Research Reports

Market Research Reports frequently contain market share information. IBISWorld, for example, includes market share data in the section of its reports describing  “Major Companies”. Below is an excerpt of the market share information for Craft Beer Production (OD4302). The market research reports prepared by BBC Research are an excellent source of market share data on high tech industries including such fields as biotechnology, nanotechnology and semiconductor manufacturing.

See our FAQ on Market Research Reports for additional sources.

Business Literature

Although Market Share Reporter is an excellent index to data on market share in business trade sources, its information is always at least a year out of date. The databases Business Source Complete, ABI/Inform, Business and Industry, PROMT and Factiva Dow Jones all supply more current data. Each of these databases has a slightly different way of searching for the concept of “market share”.

• ABI/Inform:  Search Market Share (as Subject from pull down menu)
• Business and Industry: Select Market Share as Concept from pull down menu
• Business Source Complete: Search Market Share (as Subject from pull down menu)
• Factiva Dow Jones:  Type NS=C313 (this is the code for Market Share)
• PROMPT: Type EC=Market Share (this is the event code for Market Share)

In each source, combine the “market share” concept with a product or company name e.g.  NS=C313 and COKE; or EC=Market Share and Cell Phones.

Statista

Statista is a database that aggregates statistical data on over 600 international industries from more than 18,000 sources, including market researchers, trade organizations, scientific journals, and government databases. Search for “market share” together with a company, brand, product and geographic location. For example, market share and PC. Statista allows presentation of the data in either graph or tabular format. Their graph of market share data above is from the technology research company Gartner.

For a recap of these sources take a look at our Business FAQ “How do I get info on market share or market size?”.

Start to create a View by setting up a Monitor or selecting a Security. In either case you will then add other Components. In this example we will build a View by adding a Monitor. In Part III we will add additional Components to expand our View.

Creating a Monitor

There are several ways to set up a Monitor.

Type Monitor into the keyword search box in the Launchpad toolkit and click on the link.   A blank monitor screen will appear. Or, in Launchpad, click on Tools, and then click on the Monitor Manager.  Next, click on Create New.

This brings you to a sample Monitor so you are able to see how a completed Monitor will look. Next, click on Launch Monitor which will retrieve the same blank monitor as above.

Third, click on Browse in the Launchpad Toolkit.  You will be brought to a list of Components.  Select Monitor. Click on the link and a sample screen will appear.  Click on Launch Monitor to get the same blank Monitor screen.

Adding Securities to the Monitor

Now add securities to the Monitor. You can type in individual securities in the amber box on the Monitor or import a list such as the results of a Bloomberg screening ( EQS <GO> ).  You can also add an Index, right click on the plus sign (+) next to the Index ticker and then click on “add members”.

A populated Monitor will look like this.

Monitors are interactive and allow you to easilty change the information displayed in the Monitor. Like the Launchpad, there are several tools to help you customize the Monitor.

Monitor Tools

Monitor.  You can add securities in this tool.

View.  Here you can change the display of the securities.  For instance, you can sort the securities alphabetically or by industrial sector.  You can request summary statistics for the watch list.  Also, it is easy to manage columns by moving, adding or deleting them.  If you have a large watch list, you may want to break the list down into several panes allowing you to view more securities at one time.  Notice in the graph below that Show Column Headings has been toggled on (note the blue check mark).  Wherever you see a little gray box next to the menu option that option can be toggled on or off.

Alerts.  Here you activate the News heat.  The second column on the Monitor shows a Bar Graph icon at the top of the column. You can toggle this On or Off.  News Alert is color coded and reactive to let you know which companies are currently in the news.  You can create your own alerts by clicking on Create New Monitor Alerts under Alerts.  Once you have created an alert, the first column in the Monitor will indicate if the parameters of your alert have been met by any of the securities.

News.  This function allows you to turn the News Heat on or off.  Column 2 in the Monitor will display a bar graph for each equity showing the level of current news.

Link to.  The most useful function in this tab is Component Groups.  This tool allows you to link Components in your View to a Group. The Group Manager allows you link the Components so when you change something in one Component it will be reflected in the other Components.  For instance, in one Component you may be tracking the historical price of one of the securities in your watch list, such as IBM.  The other components will also bring up materials related to IBM depending on what you have selected to include in your View and Group (news, analyst reports, dividends, etc.).  Once you change the company in one of these, all the Components will update to display data on the new security.

REMEMBER TO USE THE LAUNCHPAD “VIEW” TOOL TO SAVE YOUR VIEW AND NAME IT.

Coming Soon:  It’s Not Rocket Science – Part III:  Add Components

Since 1913, CCH has been providing information on tax, accounting, and auditing. Intelliconnect (formerly CCH Internet Tax Research Network) is a primary resource for finding information about the tax code, regulations, case law, and more. The amount of content available is overwhelming, which can make searching for specific tax information difficult. In this post, we show you the mechanics of searching Intelliconnect and how to quickly and easily parse out federal tax information.

You can search across the entire CCH Library using the search box or within specific publications for a more targeted search. A good starting point for federal tax information is in Tax Research Consultant and Standard Federal Tax Reporter. Both publications are written by experts at CCH. The explanations use plain language to make the tax code easier to understand while also providing links to the primary sources.

• Tax Research Consultant – explanations include practical examples, sample calculations, comments and more. Useful for researching how to solve common tax problems. Content is arranged topically.

• Standard Federal Income Tax Reporter is arranged to coincide with the federal income tax code. Includes links to full-text IRS documents (e.g. regulations, cases, etc.), where applicable.

Let’s try a sample search. Let’s say you are searching for hobby loss deductions. Begin by expanding Federal Tax => Federal Tax Editorial Content and selecting Tax Research Consultant and Standard Federal Tax Reporter. Once these two publications are selected, search for the terms hobby loss deduction in the search box. The drop-down box will automatically change to search within the “Selected Content.” This means you will only be searching within those two publications, rather than the entire CCH library.

The results are arranged by category with “Explanations” at the top.  Results are sorted by relevancy, with the three most relevant results displayed for each category. Start by reading the explanations, which are the plain language summaries written by CCH experts.

CCH provides several tools that make filtering through the content much simpler.

1. In Results – Use the Up/Down arrow to quickly view the next or previous documents in your search results list.
2. Read Previous Document/Read Next Document – After performing a search and opening a document, you can quickly access the nearby documents in that publication (i.e. documents that come before and after the document you currently have open).
3. Document Path – Shows where the document you have selected falls in the hierarchy.
4. Send to Tray – Documents you send to tray will remain there until you leave the system. This is a temporary parking spot that is purged when you logout or exit.
5. Save/Email & Print – Every document can be saved as PDF/HTML or printed.

A way to further narrow your results is to locate either topically or by section where the results are coming from. From the left-hand menu, when you are viewing the results of a search, expand by Library => Federal Tax => Federal Tax Editorial Content. Then expand both the Tax Research Consultant and Standard Federal Income Tax Reporter to view results by topic/section. In this case, most of our results are coming from Deductions –Secs. 161-249 within the Standard Federal Tax Reporter. If you further expand Deductions we will find that most results come from Hobby Losses – Sec. 183. This may be where you want to start your research. Select Hobby Losses – Sec. 183 to view only the 91 related results.

Finding federal tax information is only one aspect of research using Intelliconnect. Take a look at the variety of subjects that Intelliconnect covers in our Business FAQs. For more resources for tax information take a look at our Accounting Research Guide and our Business FAQ “Where do I find information on taxation?“.

Corporate Affiliations shows the corporate structure of more than 1 million public and private companies worldwide, with subsidiary listings and corporate linkage. Some important features of this database are:

Corporate Hierarchy

Corporate hierarchy shows the relationships among parents and subsidiaries. To find this information, search by company name. After selecting the company of interest, click on “Hierarchy” found in the left-hand menu. The screen below shows part of the corporate hierarchy of Bain Capital.

Company Executives

Use this database to find detailed lists of executives, their titles and biographies. For example, you can search and retrieve executives worldwide who are Wharton graduates (there are more than 1,200). The screen below is a partial list of Wharton graduates who are officers in Chinese companies.

Search Path: Feature => Bio Search => Advanced Search => Criterion (Education) = Univ of Pa Wharton

Cross-Border Ownership

Lists and descriptions of cross-border ownership – for example French owned companies operating in Germany.

Search Path: Feature => Advanced Search => Criterion (e.g. Parent Company=France and Country=Germany).

Historical Information

In addition to its current data, Corporate Affiliations has a file of historical information from 1993 on. This makes it easy to track corporate ownership and executive movement over time.

Search Path: Feature => Historical Search (search for company, country, person, SIC, and sales range)

As we mentioned in our first post on private companies, the Penn Libraries subscribe to several databases that cover this type of research. So far we’ve highlighted ORBIS and Corporate Affiliations. In future posts we will continue our coverage of private company databases. For more, take a look at our Business FAQ on finding private company information.

Three open learning platforms known for their high-quality content are:

Coursera describes itself as a “social entrepreneurship” company and is currently partnering with 62 universities to provide free, online college-level courses. Their vision is to make education more accessible beyond the traditional classroom. Coursera offers an extensive course catalog that is continually growing. Courses are grouped into categories like Business & Management, Chemistry, Law, and Social Sciences. Course offerings in five different languages are also represented. Take a look here to see if your favorite Penn professors are offering any upcoming courses.

MIT OpenCourseWare lists course materials from 2,150 MIT classes and is touting 125 million visitors so far. This open learning platform differs from Coursera because the content is provided exclusively by MIT, rather than a consortium of universities. Course materials from almost every MIT course are available for free on the site for any person to access. Each course includes all of the materials used in a typical class. Everything from the syllabus, lectures, recitation videos, exams and solutions are included in the virtual course pack. The structure allows a person to go at his or her own pace, which makes this a good learning platform for self-study. While many of the courses do focus on the hard sciences, courses are available in business, art, and medicine, too.

edX is the result of a partnership between Harvard University and MIT. The platform and mission are similar to Coursera, but currently the offerings are fewer. Right now, there are 20+ online courses offered from HarvardX, MITX, and BerkeleyX, but more universities are slotted to join in the future. The online classroom includes self-paced learning, online discussion groups, wiki-based collaborative learning, assessment of learning, and other interactive learning tools; all of which are freely available. edX’s main purpose is to increase teaching and learning. They do this through providing freely available courses, but also through using the platform to study how students learn in an online environment.

Although not an MOOC, Lynda.com is an excellent online learning platform. Even though it is a subscription service, it is available for free to current Pennkey holders through the Penn Libraries. Click here to find out how you can access Lynda.com at the Penn Libraries.  Lynda.com provides access to 1,500+ high-quality video tutorials that cover software programs, creative arts, and business.  This is a great place to learn how to use the Adobe Creative Suite (which is available on most of the computers in the Van Pelt Library). Other topics include CSS, social media, Excel, iOS, and many more.

If you are interested in reading more about MOOCs, take a look at The Pennsylvania Gazette’s article, MOOC U., and a recent Penn News article.

Use this tool to help you keep up on all of the securities and industries you are currently tracking. The Launchpad can contain a watch list of securities, news, analysis or whatever else you want displayed.  You can save this customized View (create as many as you need) and use it over and over.  You can also change a View whenever you want.  Just be sure to save your changes. And, you can select which Launchpad View displays when you log into Bloomberg.

First, you need to create your own Bloomberg account on any of the Lippincott Library Bloomberg terminals.  Instructions are available in our Business FAQ and at the Bloomberg terminals.  Once logged in, type BLP <GO> and you are ready to starting building.  This is what the Launchpad toolbar looks like:

In order to build a Launchpad View you will need to create:

Monitor: A watch list of securities.

Components: Boxes displaying different functions related to the Monitor or a security.

View: A combination of Components which display on the desktop. Views must be named and saved.

Groups: Components that are grouped together. In a Group, if you change something in one Component it is reflected in the other Components.

Launchpad Tools

The Launchpad includes several tools that are helpful for creating and managing your Launchpad View. Several are described below.

Views:  Use this function to save your View, which displays the set of Components you have created and the way you have customized them. Any time you change any Component, you need to save the View.

Pages:  At times you may have so many components in a View that you will want to create Pages. Click on New Page to begin. Give the page a name. The new page will literally look like a blank screen until you add components. 

Tools:  The options included in the Tools tab allow you to manage your various Monitors, Views, and Groups. Use the Managers to save them, create new ones, rename them or delete them.

Notice the tabs available such as Create New, Launch, or Delete.

Now that you’ve seen the basic structure of Launchpad you are ready to begin building your own. In a future post we will show step-by-step how to create a new Launchpad. In the meantime take a look at our Bloomberg Help Guide and Bloomberg Highlights Round 1, Round 2, and Round 3 for general information about using Bloomberg.

The Penn Libraries subscribe to several databases with extensive information on private companies. The databases all provide, at some level of detail, company and business descriptions, industry classifications, and executive names. They differ in the range of companies, and executives offered, as well as the financial detail they give. All have distinctive features of value. Over the next few weeks, we will describe several databases that are useful for private company research.

ORBIS

Providing access to more than 100 million company records worldwide, ORBIS is the master index to the Bureau Van Dijk (BVD) suite of databases. The suite draws data from three types of files.

• Subject Related Files: Zephyr for M&A deals, Bankscope, ISIS for Insurance
• Country Specific Files:  including databases such as FAME for the U.K., QIN for China, and ICARUS for Canada and the U.S.
• International Files: OSIRIS, for 70,000 listed companies worldwide

Private Companies with Financial Statements

Most private companies in the U.S. are not required to make their financial statements public. Many other countries, in contrast, often do require private companies to publish financial details of their operations. For example, well over one million private companies in the UK file public financial statements.

ORBIS provides current financial records for more than 9 million unlisted companies worldwide. To illustrate the financial detail available for even very small companies, we have displayed a few Japanese private companies in the consumer electronics manufacturing industry. These are the smallest companies in a group of 360 that have financial statements.

Selecting Private Companies on ORBIS

ORBIS has several methods of selecting groups of private companies. They include options for selecting:

• Listed vs. Unlisted Companies
• Companies owned by an Ultimate Owner
• Companies owned by a PE Firm
• Companies owned by a Subsidiary

ORBIS gives up to ten levels of subsidiary ownership for each company. They also provide an excellent online Ownership Guide that helps clarify the often complex problems of “Who Owns Whom”.

ORBIS also allows the selection of company records based on specific national legal forms. China, for example, has some 20 different company legal forms. Of particular interest for China, are the group of “State Owned Companies” of which ORBIS has records for 1.4 million.

Tools of Analysis

ORBIS has several tools for examining a portfolio of companies. Methods of analysis include: Aggregation, Concentration, Regression Segmentation, and Peer analysis.

We show a few snapshots based on the group of private Japanese consumer electronic companies described earlier. These examples use the default variables.

1. Concentration
2. Aggregation
3. Distribution

This isn’t the only database that covers private companies. In future posts we will go into more depth on our other subscription databases that provide private company information. In the meantime, take a look at our Business FAQ on private companies for more resources on the topic.

Bloomberg  Highlights is back again to show off more of what Bloomberg can do. For more highlights, take a look at Round 1 and Round 2.

Bloomberg Social Media Alert

Bloomberg measures the volume of postings about companies from StockTwits, Twitter, Yahoo Finance message boards, and other social media sites. When companies have an unusually large number of messages, Bloomberg lists them as “Velocity Alerts”. Such alerts may be early warning signs of significant company events.

Type NH NGV and hit the green <GO> key. Search by company ticker to find any alerts posted.

Here is a graph of the velocity alerts of Ford Motor Company showing an unusual pattern of social media alerts.

Private Company Information

Although Bloomberg is primarily a source of financial information about public companies, it does list information about several hundred private companies. These are private companies that have public debt. To see if a company is covered by Bloomberg, type the name of the company into the command line and hit the yellow <Equity> key.

For example, typing Cargill into the command line will bring up a four page company description with links to the company’s financial data.

The financial data provided for Cargill is fairly comprehensive and current.

In addition, Bloomberg provides links to the original source documents for their data. Cargill’s financial detail is given in the “Program Prospectus”.

Analyst Reports

To get access to analyst reports (investment bank reports) on Bloomberg, type the following into the command line:

Ticker [Equity] BRC <GO>

Bloomberg analyst reports are a useful adjunct to the analyst reports in Thomson One.  In a previous post “Wrestling with Analyst Reports”, we’ve outlined how to access and download analyst reports using Thomson One. For additional information on analyst reports, take a look at our Business FAQ on the topic.

Create Your Own Reports  

The Experience Exchange Reports (EER) are quite specific and include an Occupancy Survey as well as an Income/Expense Report. In addition to overall rental income and operating expenses, the reports include details such as expenses for Cleaning (e.g. window washing), Repair & Maintenance (e.g. HVAC), Utilities, Security, Administration, and Parking.

BOMA allows screening on more than a dozen variables. The basic screen above allows selection by:

• Country (US or Canada)
• Market (Metropolitan Area)
• Sector (Private/Public or both)
• Location (Downtown/Suburbs or both)
• Building Size (There are five categories ranging from less than 50,000 sq. ft to                   more than 600,000 sq. ft.)

Reports (typically three pages) can be downloaded to EXCEL or saved as a PDF.

The image above shows an excerpt of a report where we screened for privately owned buildings in Philadelphia, of 100,000 square feet or more, located either downtown or in the suburbs. Additional screens could include:

• Building type
• Ownership Type
• Number of Floors
• Proximity to Public Transportation
• Age of Building

Below is a portion of the same report showing the section on Income and Expenses.

The BOMA database is easy to use. First time users will need to create an account on the BOMA website. The account creation mechanism is a bit clumsy, but instructions are provided once you authenticate through the Penn proxy. Despite this drawback, BOMA is a unique data source for commercial real estate research.

For more resources that cover the real estate industry, take a look at our Real Estate Industry Research Guide and our Business FAQ on real estate.