Perhaps you’ve noticed our new company explorer?

Anywhere you see the gold “Choose Companies” button, you can open our new tool to select groups of companies for comparing, searching, etc.

One of the most powerful new features is the ability to screen on a variety of metrics to quickly tailor a peer group to your needs. Then you can save it for later use.

First, a note about peer groups. We often hear people say that peer analysis doesn’t make senses for some companies because they are unique and have no direct peers. This is simply not true.

Every public company has peers, of course. Peers don’t have to be identical businesses. But for some of these complicated cases, the peer group you use can (and should!) vary based on the analysis. For example, looking at profitability ratios? Build a peer group of companies with similar income statement structures. (SAAS companies have very different structures than manufacturing companies.) On the other hand, if you are benchmarking pension plans, the peer group should be similar sized companies with pension plans…regardless of industry.

So, how do you build these peer groups?

First, you can navigate through our explorer to build a list of potential peers. Then use the screen/filter tool to narrow it down using any of our standardized metrics or ratios, or (if you’re feeling brave) based on XBRL tag. In the simple example above, I’ve screened a group of airline companies for revenue greater then $1 billion. Here is the result:

Finally, I can name it and save it. In addition, if I want to get an email when a new filing comes in for any of these companies, I can check the box for that. 


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