In Orbis type the company name in the search box, select the proper entity if more than one appear, and once the company report is displayed click on Peer Comparison in the left-hand menu. You can also access the Peer Analyses when you have a search done with a group of companies. Click on Tools on the blue left-hand toolbar and then select Peer Analyses. Finally, you can use one of the templates or you can create a new one.
In Sabi type the company name in the search box, select the proper entity if more than one appear, click on View Report and the, click on Peer Report on the right-hand menu. You can also access the Peer Analyses by clicking on Peer Analyses on the right-hand toolbar.
In Factiva "Switch Factiva” and go to the previous interface. Then click on Companies/Markets from the green navigation bar at the top. Next click on Company from the white navigation bar, and search by company name or ticker. It will appear a snapshot of the company, at the end of the screen will appear "Peer group information", if you want more detailed information, click on Reports on the left and then choose Ratio Comparison Report.
In Capital IQ type the company name in the search box, select the proper entity if more than one appear, and then select Peer analysis on the left-hand menu.
In PitchBook type the company name in the search box, select the correct entity if multiple results appear, and then click on “Comparisons” in the Contents menu.
Access these resources via A-Z Databases.
LSEG Workspace (formerly Refinitiv Workspace) allows you to compare companies in several different ways. One of the most time-saving search strategies is to use one of the templates available in the Template Library to directly download data into a pre-formatted spreadsheet. With templates already built for your needs, you don’t have to spend time creating formulas or adjusting layout settings. To access the Template Library via the Workspace Excel add-in, simply click on Templates. You can find the one that best for your needs by browsing the categories on the left sidebar or entering relevant keywords in the search bar, such as: Peers. Review the template description to identify the most useful one for your purpose, then click Download to open it in a new Excel spreadsheet. As indicated in the Instructions sheet, you can replace the sample RIC code with the one you need (e.g., AAPL.O for Apple Inc.) and press Enter. The template will then automatically update all sheets with the relevant financial and valuation data, along with the competitors’ metrics.
For a company's relative value vis a vis companies in its industry, use Bloomberg (available in the Financial Room of Barcelona IESE Library. Ask staff for password).
On the one hand, the Relative Valuation (RV) function helps you identify comparable companies, to better evaluate the company that you are analyzing. Relative Valuation compares the key metrics and values (such as market capitalization, enterprise value...) of a company with other companies with similar characteristics.
First, type in the command line the company’s ticker symbol, then press the yellow <EQUITY> key and type “RV” in the command line and press <GO>. You will get a screen showing both the data of the company we are evaluating and that of the comparable companies.
Bloomberg provides multiple lists of peer companies, based on different criteria: open the "Comp Source" drop-down menu and select the source. We can use a Bloomberg-defined peer list, or get a list based on GICS sectors and sub-sectors, or even create a custom list.
Although the “RV” function is very helpful in selecting comparable companies, it is recommended to always verify their comparability by double-checking, for example, the main sector of activity, the market capitalization value, the average number of employees, the geographical area and so on. If you want to customize the list by adding specific companies, click the Edit pen icon and type in the add security field.
Once your list of peer companies is created, you will see different tabs in the upper part of the table:
- The Overview section shows key information such as market capitalization, the latest market price, EPS, P/E and ROE.
- The Comp Sheets section is made of 4 different subsections: Equity Valuation (including the main stock market multiples), CDS Spreads, Profitability (including the profitability indices and growth margins of the main income values ) and Balance sheet (including the debt and financial leverage ratios).
- Markets is another important section: here you can find the Beta, which is critical when you want to calculate the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) of the company.
- Finally, if you want to customize your list, you can click the Custom tab, then click Fields. A Browse fields window will open and here you can search for the information you wish to be displayed in your report, for example "Net Debt"; set the time period using the drop-down menu and click Update: a “Net Debt” column will be added to your custom table.
On the other hand, the function of KPIC (KPI Comparison) allows us to observe trends across industry peers. The most important KPIs (KPI — Key Performance Indicator) are identified for the selected industry and their values are compared across companies.
The amber boxes used to select the analyzed security and set some display preferences (use Periodicity to specify the data frequency, Growth to choose how the growth will be measured, and Curr for the currency of financial data shown) are outlined below:
Chart an individual KPI's historical values by clicking on the chart icon next to its name (shown below).
Some companies generate revenue in multiple industries. To switch between industries in which you want to compare the KPIs to the company's competitors, use the outlined buttons on the top of the screen:
We can also observe the KPIs for an industry in general (without selecting an individual company). Choose an industry from the Browse Dashboards on the left-hand menu.
Export table to a new Excel file by choosing Export from the red bar on the top-left part of the page.
