There are several web sites where you

There are several web sites where you can find the financial statements of U.S. public companies.
SEC is best
The best source of data for public companies is the U S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). One can
be sure that the data is accurate and it is easily available in an Excel document.
Go to WWW.sec.gov
Midway down the right column is a box for the company name or stock market ticker symbol. The box is titled
Search EDGAR, Free access to 21 million filings.
Type in the company name or ticker symbol. In my case I use LUV for Southwest Airlines Company. There is
a page for EDGAR search results with many forms. Since I am interested in the Annual Report, I type 10­K in
the box for Filing Type in the line for Filter Search Results and hit search.
Next I click on the box that says Interactive data.
In the new page under the company name is a link to print Document and another for View Excel Document. I
click on View Excel Document. That brings up an Excel spread sheet with many statements. I can pick the one
needed for the assignment.
Label Concerns
Even in SEC financial statements, the labels can differ. For example, sometimes they report Revenue or Net
Revenue. Sometimes it is Sales. These two mean the same. If there is a question, the notes to the financial
statements define the terms. Unfortunately this can be confusing.
Other sources
Companies have investor relations pages on their web sites with annual reports.
Probably the most convenient are MSN MONEY and Yahoo Finance. Go to MSN MONEY or Yahoo Finance.
Either look up or provide the stock symbols for each company (for example: FDX for FedEx and UPS for UPS,
or KO for Coca­Cola and PEP for Pepsico) and all the relevant financial information will become available.
Industry information can also be found in MSN MONEY and Yahoo Finance.
Be aware that the financial statements in MSN MONEY and Yahoo Finance are standard formats, and can differ
slightly from the actual financial statements that are in the SEC Forms 10­K of the respective companies
(accessible from MSN MONEY and Yahoo Finance) and on the corporate web sites. For our purposes, you need
not worry about these small differences in most cases. Only rarely do Yahoo and MSN leave out data to better
fit their standard format. Unfortunately it may not be possible to copy and paste the numbers into Excel and
have the program recognize the numbers for calculations.