Ease of Access: SEC XBRL Filings

The world of financial statement analysis has undergone a dramatic change with the SEC’s Interactive Data requirement.   Effective June 2011, essentially all publicly traded companies “will provide their financial statements to the Commission and on their corporate Web sites in interactive data format using the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL)."  The SEC's goal in adopting this requirement is "to provide financial statement information in a form that is intended to improve its usefulness to investors. In this format, financial statement information could be downloaded directly into spreadsheets, analyzed in a variety of ways using commercial off-the-shelf software, and used within investment models in other software formats." (Source: sec.gov, Final Rule: Interactive Data to Improve Financial Reporting.)

At FTS, we have been busy bringing the power of the interactive data to our users.  Valuation Tutor now gives you immediate access, with easy search capability, to any interactive filing for companies traded on the major exchanges.  As of the time of this writing, over 9000 10-K's, 10-Q's, and 20-F's were accessible, and we expect to add roughly 5000 filings every quarter.  We are also exploring ways to provide access to filings in other countries, since our system is used in over 20 countries.


Details of how you can access these filings is in the online textbook at www.valuationtutor.com.  Chapter 2 shows not only how you can access numerical information, but also the complete filing with all the supplementary information.  The data collector build into Valuation Tutor lets you collect data and paste it into a spreadsheet; you can collect data from different statements within a filing, across companies, across time, etc. and so create a custom dataset.   The textbooks then goes on to discuss how you understand a companies business model and strategy, conduct financial statement analysis (business ratios and activity analysis), relative valuation, and also covers a variety of intrinsic value models (such as the dividend model, free cash flow to equity, residual income, abnormal earnings, and distressed firm valuation).

This is a new and exciting capability.  Please let us know if you want to hold a web meeting so we can show you all the capabilities of Valuation Tutor.