SWOT Research

Finding a Company Profile

To understand your company’s strengths, you must begin with a thorough understanding of

• what the company does
• its area of business
• and its revenue streams

In order to research this, you’ll want to find your company’s profile from one of the databases listed below on this page.  When you read through a company profile you can find all the positives (strengths) about a company such as it's financial position, market position, unique resources or technologies.

For specific instructions on how to find a company profile, see here: https://chat.library.berkeleycollege.edu/faq/52892

Finding a 10-K Report

You can also learn a great deal about a company from its 10-K report and should be able to find out all the positive things a company did in the past year.  A 10-K is an annual report required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that gives a comprehensive summary of a public company’s performance. Generally, item 7 of the 10-K is the company's analysis of its financial condition.

*  You will only find a 10-K report for public companies.  

If the company is publicly traded, you can find its 10-K and Annual or Quarterly Reports:

• Published on their corporate website in the Investor Relations section, or
• Posted on the SEC’s EDGAR website: https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html

In order to find your company's strengths, be sure to 

1. Review the news/PR section of a company's website. Here they will talk about all the positive things the company is doing.

2. Search for new articles in NexisUni and ProQuest Central using terms such as:

• Name of company and "market share" (how much of the market share do they have?)
• Name of company and competition (to find out what they are doing better than their competitors)
• Name of company (and then sort results by date to find the most recent news of the company)