Library Guides: Annual Reports and Corporate Filings: Home

Subject Specialists

Subjects: Business, Economics

Types of Reports

The annual report to shareholders is the principal document used by most public companies to disclose corporate information to their shareholders. It is usually a state-of-the-company report, including an opening letter from the Chief Executive Officer, financial data, results of continuing operations, market segment information, new product plans, subsidiary activities, and research and development activities on future programs.

The Form 10-K, which must be filed with the SEC, typically contains more detailed information about the company’s financial condition than the annual report.

Source: SEC.gov

There are many other types of filings with the SEC. These are described in detail on the SEC website.

Annual Reports

The library has access to older annual reports in a variety of formats:

Image file (PDF) annual reports:

Thomson ONE
PDFs of annual reports 1993- present (filing data). U.S. and international companies.Earlier years are available for some companies
Mergent Online
PDFs of annual reports 1996- present (filing date). Primarily for U.S. companies.

Financial data, equity pricing, debt data and annual reports for publicly traded companies worldwide. Up to 15 years or quarters are available.
ProQuest Historical Annual Reports
PDFs of annual reports 1844-2008. The focus is on the largest companies of each year covered and there are fewer companies included for the years 1986 - 2008.

Annual reports for over 900 companies available from 1844 - 1985, with selected reports from later years. The emphasis is on the largest companies and includes most Fortune 500 companies.

Microfiche Collection of Annual Reports:

There are two Corporate Annual Report collections in the Regenstein Library within the Microform Department in the 3rd floor reading room. Reports from 1969-1979 are in alphabetical order by company. The collection that covers 1978-1996 does not separate annual reports from other SEC filings. An index (located near the fiche cabinets) must be used to find the year and fiche number for the annual report of a given company.
Print copies of annual reports:: Any corporate annual reports the U of C Library has in print form are integrated in the bookstacks collection and are included in the Library Catalog.
Choose the advanced search, enter the company name in the author box, and "annual report" in the title box. You may need to use just "report". You can then use the limits to limit by author to your company.
For example, the library holds the annual reports of Ford Motor Company for 1955-1964, 1967, 1969.