PitchBook in WRDS

Penn researchers have access to PitchBook, a popular private capital markets resource, via its native interface. However, Individual users are subject to download limits of 10 daily/25 monthly rows of company, deal, or fund data, as well as 10 daily/25 monthly rows of people data. For researchers needing more downloads, Wharton Research Data Services, or WRDS, offers PitchBook private equity, venture capital, and additional private placements data.

PitchBook data available in WRDS covers all aspects of private capital raising, featuring more than 1.6 million deals, 3 million companies including more than 660,000 private companies, 31,000 funds, and 300,000 investors. Deals provide a transaction-level view, fund data focuses on each fund held by an investment firm, and the company and investor data is presented at the business entity level. Though much of the data in PitchBook reflects only the most recent update available, also referred to as “header” data, more comprehensive data begins in the late 1990s/early 2000s, with 1% of historical coverage prior to 1992 increasing to 5% by 2000 and 10% by 2004. WRDS is developing snapshot integration that will begin to create a “history” of PitchBook header data.

Datasets from PitchBook are organized on the WRDS platform as follows: Venture Capital North America, Venture Capital Rest of World, Private Equity North America, Private Equity Rest of World, Other Data North America, and Other Data Rest of World. Within each dataset, the following queries are available: Company, Deal, Fund, and Investor. Company variables include ticker and Central Index Key (CIK) identifiers, industry descriptions and codes, and financing details. Deal variables include dates of deal announcement and completion, amount of capital invested, deal status, percentage of stake acquired, transaction categorization, detailed transaction summary, and valuation measures. If applicable, IPO details are available. CEO biographies and education summaries are also retrieved through a Deal query.

Variables in the Fund query include fund preferences, a breakout table of the fund’s direct investments, and whether the fund received investment capital from a Small Business Investment Company, a privately owned and managed investment fund licensed and regulated by the U.S. Small Business Administration. Investor query variables include investor and summary-level fund details, investment activity, and aspects of investor targets.

In addition to the four primary queries, there are 15 “relation” queries, each focusing on two categories of variables. Researchers interested in a list of a particular company’s competitors will be interested in the Company Competitor Relation query, while those examining deals entered into by certain investors will find the Deal Investor Relation query useful. There are even relation queries for deals and their tranches and deals and their beneficiaries.

From a query page, use the Data Preview tab to view the first ten rows of data for selected variables and conditional statements from the chosen data table. From the Data Preview page, the first 1,000 rows of data can be downloaded directly in xslx, api, or json format. Alternatively, click the Access All Data button on the Data Preview page to open SAS/Studio at WRDS, a web-based version of SAS, to access all data.

PitchBook documentation includes a spec file containing variable definitions, comments, and sample data. The WRDS Overview of Pitchbook page features a visual representation of PitchBook dataset organization, database usage notes, and guidance for linking PitchBook data to other datasets.  

Whether you want to track company growth, explore company financing or deals, or investigate investors, consider using PitchBook in WRDS. Contact Lippincott Library for assistance.

SAGE Video: Business and Management Collection

Feel like you’ve watched everything there is to watch on Netflix? The Lippincott Library is here to help. Find hundreds of educational business videos available in our newly acquired collection – SAGE Video: Business & Management. 

The videos in SAGE’s Business & Management collection cover a wide range of topics, including entrepreneurship, marketing, and management skills. You’ll find interviews with experts, case studies, tutorials, and conference presentations in the collection, which includes over 500 videos (totaling more than 140 hours!). Intended to support students at all levels, the length and focus of the videos vary widely, from 2-minute explanations of essential business concepts to longer, in-depth lectures and discussions. 

Each video is accompanied by a searchable transcript, which can be downloaded and viewed as a PDF. Each video is also labelled with full citation information for easy reference. SAGE Video allows users to create custom video clips and to embed videos (for example, on a course Canvas site).  

To navigate to the Business & Management video collection from anywhere in SAGE Knowledge, use the Collections menu to access SAGE Video, then select the Business & Management discipline; you can browse all Business & Management videos, or further refine by sub-discipline. You can also search within the collection using SAGE’s standard search bar – simply select “Search Videos” and enter your search terms. Happy viewing! 

Unpacking Consumer Packaged Goods with Mintel’s Global New Products Database

The Mintel Global New Products Database (GNPD) is a new Lippincott Library resource for researching the consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketplace. GNPD focuses on new products in the food, drink, beauty and personal care, home care, health and hygiene, and pet markets in 86 countries. Mintel has been monitoring products since the 1990s and adds more than 30,000 product launches to GNPD each month. In addition to new products, GNPD includes relaunched, reformulated, and repackaged products and new varieties or extended ranges of existing products. Helpful tip: if a product is purchased by another company, Mintel categorizes this as a “relaunch” and creates a separate GNPD record reflecting the new company’s ownership.

Mintel users may have encountered GNPD content during general searches on the Mintel platform. GNPD data and information appears in Mintel Country and Global reports, under Content Type: Innovative Products, and when using the Product Features filter. Now, users also have the option to search within GNPD exclusively.

To access GNPD from the Mintel platform, navigate to the Analytics menu at the top of the page and scroll over Products. From there, you can perform a basic keyword search, access the Advanced Search tool, research ingredients, and explore CPG trends.

Basic keyword searching provides quick access to new products. Every field in GNPD is keyword-searchable. Search suggestions allow you to drill down by product name, company name, flavor, fragrance, ingredients, and more.

Use the filters on the search results page to focus results on region, product claim, ingredients, company, and more. The “Refine search” free text box allows for keyword searching within results.

Advanced Search allows you to limit a search by multiple filters, many at a detailed level, enabling a refined list of results:

The example below reflects an Advanced Search for the key phrase “ice cream” in the product description, limiting to products containing the ingredient almond milk, and limiting geography to Latin America:

Results can be sorted in several ways, including by geographic Market:

Drilling into a product record yields Product Details including package size, product positioning claims, as well as Company & Source Details including manufacturer, retail store where the product was purchased, and the product price:

Product records also include nutrition facts, packaging information, product variants (when available), and links to GNPD records for similar products:

The Advanced Search function is also accessible from the basic search results page by clicking the “Edit with advanced search” link.

Product records can be downloaded into Microsoft Word, Excel/CSV, PowerPoint, or HTML. Customizable templates are available for Excel and CSV downloads. Product images can be downloaded as JPG files.

GNPD search results can be visualized, charted, and tabulated for trend analysis. Search results may also be shared through a direct link. To save GNPD searches, create a free Mintel personal profile using your Wharton or Penn email address. From a search results page, click “Save search,” name the search, and save it. You can also create email alerts for new products meeting your search criteria.

The GNPD Hopper is similar to the basket feature in Mintel reports. From a search results page, click “Add to Hopper,” then “Create new Hopper.” Name the Hopper, add records to it, and save it. You can also add Hopper comments and share Hoppers. Saved Searches and saved Hoppers are accessible from the Products page under the Analytics menu.

This is merely a brief highlight of how GNPD can streamline research in the CPG sector. To learn more about GNPD’s many tools and features, the Help & Training section accessible from the top right side of the Mintel database includes a Glossary, User Guide, and forthcoming training videos covering basic and advanced searching within GNPD.

This video from Mintel demonstrates popular GNPD features mentioned above:

For additional assistance with Mintel GNPD, please contact a Lippincott Librarian.

GNPD covers June 1996 to present. For CPG data and information prior to 1996, search GNPD’s PDF Archive, which dates back to 1973.

Detailed Cryptocurrency Data from Kaiko – Available Now!

Itching to analyze cryptocurrency data down to the tick? Kaiko’s rich historical data—accessible through the Lippincott Library—offer details from more than 50 exchanges and 7,500 currency pairs, letting you expand the boundaries of your research.

MIXing it up: microfinance data from MIX Market

Microfinance data is hard to come by since reporting requirements for Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) are not well-developed or consistent across countries. MIX Market focuses exclusively on providing information related these institutions, and their MIX Intelligence subscription lets you find information on specific institutions or screen for institutions using a wide range of criteria.   [Note: MIX Intelligence is not licensed for use outside the library, so you will have to visit Lippincott Library to use it. Just ask at our Information Desk for assistance with logging in.]

The Resources menu is the primary way to navigate to reports, data and tools in MIX Market.  The easiest option is to select Profiles to look for a specific Financial Services Provider (FSP) or to screen for organizations by region, country and type. Profiles have top level information about organizations. This includes typical directory information, such as address, contact information and high level financials for the last three reported years, as well as links to annual reports if available. See the sample record below for CUMO, an MFI in Malawi.

The profile page also lets you to easily access the FSP (Financial Service Provider) Analysis data on that organization, where each option under Report Types allows you to select individual variables

Example of available social performance variables

Use the Cross Market Analysis function to select from more than 100 specific data points to compare, such as assets, administrative expenses, average loan balance per borrower, renegotiated loans, and many more. The additional filtering and grouping options allow you to create results like the table below, which shows the number of female active borrowers by country.

In addition to making tools available that you can use to create your own analyses, MIX publishes regular quarterly reports that include their analysis and visualization of data by country. These are generally produced on a quarterly basis and include country overviews called “factsheets” which include quarter-by-quarter performance across common variables such as average loan balance, number of active borrowers and portfolio-at-risk at the country level. Their “barometer forecasts” also provide forecast data from on a quarterly survey of FSPs. The snapshot on the left illustrates the projected borrower growth rates for Bangladesh. 

 

 

 

 

Please see our Microfinance Research Guide for additional resources.

At last, Pitchbook has come along…

Lippincott Library is proud to announce the addition of Pitchbook to our list of business resources. Covering a vast array of data related to private capital markets, Pitchbook can provide the Wharton community with research information on private equity and venture capital. You will need to create an account, based on your Penn email address. There are download limitations:  Each individual has 25 downloads per month and can use up to 10 in a day.  Unlimited access using the API function in excel is available for public companies.

CEIC: Download Data for International Research

Need macroeconomic data for more than 128 countries? CEIC offers metrics including GDP, CPI, Forex rates, imports, exports, retail sales, and investment as well as premium data for Brazil, Russia, India, and China, letting you match up and download data from multiple sources for further research.

Let’s say you need to compare India’s and Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) and quarterly imports from China from 1990 through 2015.

WSJ.com is now available at Penn

The Penn Libraries are pleased to announce that access to WSJ.com is now available to Penn students, faculty and staff. This subscription includes access to the most recent three months of content published on WSJ.com, including the daily edition of the Wall Street Journal, as well as content exclusive to its online publication. To get started, use this link to set up an account with WSJ.com using your Penn email address.

WSJ.com expands the libraries’ access to content published by the Wall Street Journal Online previously accessible through Dow Jones Factiva to include video, interactive graphics, podcasts and more. WSJ.com offers an interactive version of the daily print edition of WSJ directly from its landing page via the “Today’s Paper” feature. Users can page through a digital replica of the newspaper that is can be browsed by section and downloaded in PDF format.

With a WSJ.com account, users also gain access to the “My WSJ” feature, which offers a wide variety of industry-specific newsletters and alerts that can be delivered directly to readers’ inboxes. Topics include economics, technology, leadership, culture and arts, politics and much more. Users can further personalize their experience by saving articles for future use and creating a watchlist of companies, funds, indices and other options for easy access to news and daily figures.

Once you’ve set up an account, be sure to download the WSJ app on your iOS or Android device. Simply login with your username and password to access all of the same features available on WSJ.com for when you are on the go.

To read more about how to access the Wall Street Journal through the Penn Libraries, our Business FAQ.

Wharton Faculty Research now available on ScholarlyCommons

The Penn Libraries are very pleased to announce that research papers from all academic departments of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania are now available on ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository. Reflecting the core values of inclusion, innovation and impact in the Penn Compact 2020, ScholarlyCommons shares the exceptional works of Penn faculty, staff and students with local, national and global audiences. By gathering Wharton research into a searchable repository, it is easier for scholars worldwide to discover, cite and link to these materials. These research papers can be found by visiting https://repository.upenn.edu/wharton_faculty.

Readership activity sample

With the support of Deputy Dean Michael Gibbons and the Wharton Faculty IT committee, the ScholarlyCommons team reviewed thousands of papers to date to verify copyright permissions for inclusion in the repository. The initial collection of more than 2,200 papers will continue over the coming months as additional publications are cleared and added. The Wharton material was made available on the ScholarlyCommons site in late November 2017 and has already garnered over 21,000 downloads.

Readership Distribution for Wharton Faculty Papers (11/23/17-1/21/18)

Wharton faculty should contact their Lippincott Library liaison librarian or the ScholarlyCommons team with questions or for more information about setting up accounts on ScholarlyCommons. These accounts provide download statistics for individual authors. Penn librarians can work with individual departments, centers and programs to provide specific pages that highlight the research of their unit; see for example cross-disciplinary collaborations with the Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative and the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. Contact the ScholarlyCommons team for a consultation. For more information about the Wharton Departmental Papers permissions review project, please visit the project FAQ.

That’s no moon…it’s a Data-Planet!

Lippincott Library has a new resource for your data needs: Data-Planet. Data-Planet offers a wide array of statistical and economic data – you can find everything from historical prices of oil and natural gas, to annual lobbying expenditures by US lobbyists, to the number of houses built in a given year, to the average travel time to work in a particular state. You can even combine multiple data sets to look at them side-by-side.

But how do you find data? You can start broad with a keyword search to find any data sets with those keywords in the title or description or you can browse through the available data by topic or by source. For example, click Browse by Subject to browse through Data-Planet‘s Banking, Finance, and Insurance or Housing and Construction data. Click Browse by Source to look at their data from the World Bank, the IMF, Dow Jones, and many other sources.

You can click the magnifying glass to the right of the search bar to find US State Statistical Overviews and International Statistical Overviews. From there, click a state or country to generate a list of all available data sets about that state or country. If you get lost, just click Help in the upper-right corner to find a map – you can check Data-Planet‘s general Help Guide or look through their subject-specific guides.

So now that you know how to find data, let’s talk about what you can do with it. Once you choose a data set or two, you can visualize the data as a trend chart, pie chart, ranking bar graph, or a map. You can also look at the data in a table, add custom columns to the table, and export the data in a variety of formats.

Let’s say you want to compare the median listing price, median sale price, and median home value per square foot for all homes in Philadelphia County. Drill down through Browse by Subject – Housing and Construction – Zillow Real Estate Metrics – Other Metrics, then hold the Ctrl key and click each data set of interest to select multiple data sets. You can look at the whole data set, or use the filters at the top of the screen to limit your results to data from a specific state or county. Other data sets let you filter by industry, commodity, agency, bureau, and more.

Data-Planet‘s default visualization is a trend chart like the one above, but just click another visualization option to switch. The map visualization is particularly useful for granular data sets like real estate data, because much of the real estate data in Data-Planet goes to the county, zip code, or census-block level. You can even create a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for any data visualizations you create in Data-Planet. The DOI records the date and time a particular visualization was created and acts as a permanent identifier anyone can use to cite your visualization. I created a DOI for the chart above, and you can check it out here: https://doi.org/10.6068/DP160527497B239.

These are just a few things you can do with Data-Planet. From looking at data across state lines or industries, to mapping demographic information, there’s a whole planet’s worth of data for you to explore. And if you get lost, you can always contact a Lippincott Librarian for help.