Comparative financial ratio analysis data helps provide a look at an organization's operational efficiency, liquidity, and profitability with benchmarks for performance over time and risks. Information comes from financial statements including income statements and balance sheets. When paired with other metrics, one can see a broader view of the overall financial health of the organization. When doing financial ratio analysis, look for gross profits, current ratio, margin ration and also inventory turnover ratios (Bloomenthal, 2024).

Our course textbook (David & David, 2017) lists three free and five subscription-based resources for finding financial data about organizations. Oddly, one of the sites that was listed as subscription-based is actually free - YahooFinance (listed in the textbook as biz.yahoo.com/ic/, reroutes to https://finance.yahoo.com/screenerLinks to an external site. )Links to an external site.

I was not able to find a way to access the other subscription-based resources through our library, so I have ranked the free resources below for ease of finding financial ratio analysis data and listed the other subscription services for reference. Anyone who knows if there is a way to access them through our course please share tips, or otherwise if anyone has access to the subscription services by other means, I'd be curious to know your experience with them.

To test the websites, I chose to search a somewhat lesser known but growing company called Beyond Meat, Inc. so I could get a better sense of how easy it would be to find info (compared to a well known company like Apple or Coca-Cola that might be easier to find).

Free Resources

#1: https://finance.yahoo.com/Links to an external site. - I've used this tool before and like how easy it is to find information, stocks and analysis info (use the search feature, type in the company name, see live stock data, find analysis options on the left hand side bar).

#2: https://www.morningstar.com/Links to an external site. - Easy to find the company stock and analysis data I was searching for. It just took a few extra clicks than yahoo. They have a "Search Quotes and Site" bar in the upper left corner of the landing page. It pulls up links to the company's US Securities, Foreign Securities, and also Articles & Videos.

#3/4 Tied - Difficult to find what I was looking for. Initially, I could not find anything on the sample company I selected from Hoovers (now called Dun & Bradstreet), and searching GlobalEdge, I was able to find some blog articles about my selected company, then saw a link to Hoovers, which took me to a different landing page than the link provided by the textbook, and then I was able to find my sample company using a new search option. I didn't find any financial analysis data directly on the GlobalEdge website other than some details in the blog, but as they lead me to the right page on "Hoovers" that allowed me to find some financial data.

https://globaledge.msu.edu/global-insights/by/industryLinks to an external site.

www.hoovers.com Links to an external site.(rerouted to https://www.dnb.com/products/dnb-hoovers.htmlLinks to an external site.) - after spending a while searching, I could not find the resource or link to find financial ratio data, and using their website search function did not provide any results for that or the sample company.

Subscription services:

www.mergentonline.comLinks to an external site.

http://new.dowjones.com/products/factiva/Links to an external site.

www.standardandpoors.comLinks to an external site.

https://www.dnb.com/Links to an external site. (listed in the book as www.avention.com/OneSourceLinks to an external site.)