My Favourite Tipples from a Market Size and Share Specialist
Jinfo Blog

By Chris Porter

Abstract

Chris Porter frequently creates reports on market size and share and competitive dynamics. He shares some of his favourite tipples, especially those relating to hard-to-find revenue information on private companies around the world.

Item

I frequently work on global market size and share studies and assessments of competitive dynamics within particular industry segments, either directly for individual clients or in association with other consulting firms. For publicly quoted companies, this of course involves long forays into the far recesses of annual reports, investor relations presentations and earnings call transcripts. Private companies, or regional subsidiaries of public ones, pose other challenges.

Here are some relevant tipples, which I shall not be giving up for Lent:

• Bundesanzeiger: In Europe, German filings site Bundesanzeiger can give excellent information for the very reasonable price of a "CAPTCHA". German companies also tend to give a helpfully clear account of how they expect to perform in the coming year.

• Bilans Gratuits: French website Bilans Gratuits, true to its name, provides some free high-level information on French company financials; a relatively modest charge to the credit card will bring you a full filing.

• Bizfile and SSM e-Info: Getting any private-company financials at all for parts of the Asia-Pacific region can be quite a challenge, but Singapore's Bizfile and Malaysia's SSM e-Info have both given me a degree of financial insight into small but fast-growing firms in the area which has pleasantly surprised my clients. The burden on the credit card is quite a bit lower for Malaysia than for Singapore.

• Dow Jones Factiva: When it comes to subscription-based company information aggregators, I do find that the Companies & Executives component within Dow Jones Factiva can be very helpful for private-company revenue trending. It has not felt like the most loved or cared-for part of the product portfolio in recent years, but it definitely has its uses.

• LinkedIn: Finally I constantly remind myself not to overlook the nuggets hidden in full view. A LinkedIn search on company name and/or keyword can uncover useful clues, as much as valuable contacts.

• Glassdoor.com: This can certainly provide some flavour and spice; a simple Google search for a company name in combination with filetype:pdf, filetype:ppt or filetype:doc will still occasionally astonish!

An article in FreePint which I found particularly interesting:

One article I have recently enjoyed in FreePint: as a Francophile I have taken an interest in French monitoring software company Digimind over the years, and am also fascinated by the evolution of social media monitoring software, so was very pleased to read Aileen Marshall's recent review of Digimind Social.

Contribute Your Tipples

Would you like to share your favourite Tipples with the FreePint audience? Email catherine.dhanjal@freepint.com for contributor guidelines.

« Blog