Reference at Newman Library

Tag: Factiva

Change in Factiva Sources by Industry Option

Effective October 22, 2013, Factiva has revised the industry code hierarchy from 30 to 17 headings. While some of the former Source Groups will be moved into a new Source Group (i.e. “Computers/Electronics” will now be under “Technology” in the hierarchy), others will be eliminated altogether. The following is a list of the Source Groups removed and whether they have been moved into new ones:

Accounting and Consulting
Advertising and Public Relations
Aerospace and Defense
Airlines
Banking and Credit (Now use new Business/Consumer Services and/or new Financial Services)
Chemicals
Clothing and Textiles (Now use new Retail/Wholesale)
Computers and Electronics (Now use new Technology and/or new Consumer Goods and/or new Industrial Goods)
Environment and Waste Management
Food, Beverage and Tobacco (Now use Consumer Goods)
Hotels, Restaurants and Casinos (Now use new Leisure/Arts/Hospitality)
Insurance (Now use new Financial Services)
Internet and Online Services
Investing/Securities (Now use new Financial Services)
Machinery and Industrial Goods (Now use new Industrial Goods)
Metals and Mining (For Metal Products, use new Industrial Goods)
Paper and Packaging
Pharmaceuticals (Now use new Health Care/Life Sciences)

These changes will significantly alter our student’s ability to conduct trade journal searches since many source groups have either been removed or changed in order to make it less explicit what new source group to search.

Look for additional changes to Sources by Industry which will take place on December 10.

News Pages in Factiva Show Headlines When There Is No Full Text Access

Louise alerted Mike and me that several sources whose daily headlines are displayed on the News Pages section of Factiva wouldn’t let us click through to the full text. The two newspapers with this issue are the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. If you try to click through on a headline, you get this error message:

Factiva--news pages error message

 

After contacting the vendor (ProQuest in this case, as they handle academic markets for this Dow Jones product) and from responses I got on the ERIL-L mailing list, I learned that there is nothing that we can do. Others have reported this problem over the years and only heard the the vendor say they’ll add it to the list of feature requests.

As you can see from the image below, there is a drop-down menu on the top left corner that lets you select other sets of sources. One of them is a set of sources called “United States: Academic” that also puts the WSJ and the NYT at the top of the page, but then instead of showing the LA Times and the Chicago Tribune, it offers another newspaper for which we have no access here: the San Francisco Chronicle.

In other databases, we do have limited access to these three papers that are unhelpfully displayed in the New Pages:

Factiva--news pages problem

 

LibGuide updated for ACC 4100 Summer

I have updated the LibGuide for Accounting 4100 Summer.  There are two sections being taught by Prof. Jian Xiao.  This is a communications intensive course. The students are doing research on one of 12 companies that are listed in the guide.  All of the companies, except Facebook, are non-U.S.-based public companies that trade their shares on U.S. exchanges  as ADRs.  The company websites, Edgar Online I-Metrix, Mergent Online, Standard & Poor’s NetAdvantage, Audit Analytics, Factiva and Value Line, are among the suggested resources to help the students prepare their presentations.  The students need to discuss the impact of International Financial Reporting Standards on the company’s bottom line, and whether to invest in the company.  (Facebook, uses the FASB Accounting Standards Codification, rather than IFRS, and being newly publicly traded hasn’t filed a 10-K.)

The course runs through July.  I made a presentation to the two sections yesterday but I also said that they could get help at the reference desk if I were not available.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Accounting assignment involving revenue recognition

I’ve learned that there have been several inquiries at the reference desk relating to a revenue recognition assignment (2 pages) for an accounting class.  Apparently they need to locate three companies in the same industry and make some comparisons.

Based on this limited information, and a student’s comment that he had an hour to locate the information, I would make the following suggestions:

Revenue recognition is a very broad topic.

The SEC has a topical index of revenue recognition issues at:

http://www.sec.gov/interps/account/sabcodet13.htm

To quickly identify three companies in the same industry with some revenue recognition problems (which would likely provide something to write about), I would suggest:

Go to the Audit Analytics Database

Select restatements in the right column and a text search.

Then, select an industry from choices available in the Industry box.

(If a company has had to restate their earnings, it’s usually a news making event.)

Restatements can occur for many reasons.  All four of these options in Audit Analytics

include revenue recognition as a choice, so the student can select the choice(s) the student wants.  The results can be downloaded and the three companies selected.

Databases such as Factiva, Business Source Complete, ABI Inform Global may have specific articles about the companies identified.  Edgar Online I-Metrix, Metrix, and other resources can be selected for keyword searching of SEC filings relating to revenue recognition by the companies.

Another possible search is on Factiva, limiting the search to specific industries, geographically to the the U.S. and the subject Commodities, Financial Market news, and a specific time period and doing a keyword search like (revenue recognition) and (FASB or SEC), and news articles for companies in the same industry will be retrieved.

The “gift card” assignment that some students have had in the past would be an example of a revenue recognition issue.  Searching ABI Inform Global for “gift cards” and “revenue recognition” brings up 14 articles, some which mention specific companies.

Since most retail companies have some form of gift cards, or customer loyalty programs, it would be easy to identify three retail companies and search their SEC filings as to how they account for them.

I hope that this information is helpful.

Accounting assignment on “push down accounting”

I helped a student in Acc 4100 who is part of a team doing research and a presentation on “push down accounting.”  They are to include references to companies using push down accounting.  Here are some possible sources:

Books 24×7 -search FinancePro collection for phrase “push down accounting”.  There are some books with chapters explaining this phrase.

ABI Inform and Business Source Premier can be searched for articles in accounting journals.  These can help explain push down accounting, which results in a new basis (from what I read quickly–I really didn’t study it).

CCH Accounting Research Manager–offers the FASB Codification and interpretations and explanations.  The FASB Codification relating to push down accounting is 805-50-15-7 through 15-9.   Among the results I looked at were some AICPA issues papers including pushdown accounting in practice with examples from the 1970s and 1980s mentioned.

For current/recent examples, I suggested to the student to try Factiva as we found some earnings releases (from Business Wire and other wire services) and also earnings conference calls in which a specific company’s  officers explained  how push down accounting affected their earnings.

Doing phrase searches for push down accounting in SEC filings on Mergent and Edgar Online I-Metrix also provided some recent examples.

The student was pleased with these suggestions.  I neglected to ask if they were to consider non-US companies.  I hope these suggestions are helpful in case the question comes up again.

Sources of historic gold prices for assignment

Last night a student came to the reference desk  looking for data giving the prices of several commodities (gold, any oil) and the CPI for five years for a class assignment due Monday.

She wanted them in downloaded Excel files.  I was able to locate what she needed except for Gold. Although I initially missed “Gold” in the currencies available in Factiva (one can download two years from Factiva), Ryan reminded me it was there. (He was walking by and I asked him.)

I also found, after the student left, that the World Gold Council offers historic gold prices from 2000 (daily, monthly, but not  annually) downloadable into Excel.  Bloomberg, Reuters and Datastream were also mentioned as sources to the student.

Ratios on Factiva

When the subject of industry ratios comes up with students at the reference desk, I usually direct them to the subject guides for industry info. Factiva is listed there as a source of ratios. I’ve never been able to find them, even using the instructions on the subject guide ratios page. Linda R. helped find them today. Here’s how to get to the (buried) ratios (and by the way, the source is Reuters):
1. Click on Companies/Markets
2. Click on Company
3. Enter ticker symbol or name
4. Click on the search icon and you’ll see a “Snapshot” page
5. Click on Reports (left nav)
6. Dropdown to “Ratio Comparison Report”
7. Click on “View Report” in either HTML or PDF
8. Voila!
Enough clicks for you? Thanks Linda for helping to figure that out.

WSJ offers discount subscription options for students

While returning from an English 2100 instruction session, I noticed that the Wall Street Journal had a table today on the second floor of the vertical campus.   Because we have students asking about discounts, I will place the material in a folder at the reference desk.  This month they are offering students a special rate for print and online–$24.95 for ten weeks, $59.95 for 26 weeks, and a year for $119. Two year subscriptions are available for $179, a 75% discount.  Sometimes students want their own subscriptions rather than using FACTIVA. (Sometimes they don’t know about access on FACTIVA.)

What moves the markets?

Ryan and I were just working with a student on an assignment where he had to find out what economic news affected the markets during a particular time period.  Another student asked the same question yesterday in a slightly different way: What was happening in the economy that changed libor rates during one month in 2007? We found two approaches that work well.

Use Dismal Scientist. Choose the Country pages for the United States from the tab at the top of the page. Then use the drop down menu to pick a date.  You can choose any month and year back to 2006. The results are both announcements of the release of economic indicators and market wrap-up news and analysis.

Use Factiva.  In order not be be overwhelmed with too many stories, set up your search like this.  From “Subjects” in the indexing boxes, open “Content Types” and click on “”Page One Stories.”  Also from “Subjects,” choose “Economic News”  and “and” it with your page one stories.  Then pick a source. You can use just The Wall Street Journal, but I liked the results when I used the Dow Jones Publications from “Sources by Type.”