Copy
The Calcbench Insider: March 2017


Hello Calcbench fans, we hope first-quarter 2017 is treating you well. As everyone prepares to dive into 2016 annual report and scour the financials as proxy season begins, we here are busy expanding our product lineup and dabbling in financial data research.

 

Whether you’re new to our products or looking to learn more about how we can improve your day-to-day, we hope you find the information below useful and entertaining. Sign up here for a free Calcbench trial. As always, your feedback is welcome.

 

All the best,

 

The Calcbench Team

What’s New in Calcbench

How to set email alerts for corporate filings. Last month we walked through how subscribers can create or designate peer groups. This month we continue the hit parade with a post on how to create email alerts, so that when a company in one of your peer groups does submit a filing, you receive an alert immediately and can go investigate. Read more inside.

 

Improved segment reporting. Calcbench has revamped its Segments, Rollforwards, and Breakouts page, giving subscribers a much easier interface to search what disclosures companies are making by segment (geographic region, operating segment, debt instruments, pensions, derivatives, and much more). Take a look to see how it works, you’ll love it.


See the whole universe. We also made a small but important adjustment to our Excel Add-In and our Multi-Company database page: you have the option to view the “whole universe” of 9,000+ filers in the Calcbench database. Now, for example, you can easily search for one line-item disclosure that any company has made, or build more comprehensive financial models. See how to use the feature here.

Geeking Out on Data
 

An early look at 2016 annual reports. Large corporations with a fiscal year-end of Dec. 31 started filing their 2016 Form 10-K reports in February, and we have enough to do some preliminary reviews of the S&P 500. To that end, we studied the revenue, operating profit, operating cash flow, assets, and liabilities of 143 companies in the S&P 500, just to see what we might find. All were up over 2015 numbers, by middle-single digits. Read more inside.

 

Operating margins at large filers, 2013-2016. In another exercise to look at 2016 data, we studied the change in operating margins at 181 large filers, 2013 through 2016. Short answer: margins have barely budged in four years, fluctuating from 12.70 to 12.47 percent. Read more inside.

 

Share repurchase programs, through Q3 2016. Buybacks of company stock slowed in the latter half of 2016, according to research we did earlier this winter. After brisk year-over-year growth 2012-15, the dollar volume of buybacks fell 6.7 percent in the first three quarters of 2016 compared to the same year-ago period. The volume of “mega-buybacks” (companies spending more than $1 billion in a quarter on buybacks) also fell, although 2016 numbers are still well above where they were in 2012. Read more inside.
Need to Learn the Ropes?
 
Copyright © 2017 Calcbench, All rights reserved.