Accounting and Taxation

Ratios are a good tool to use to evaluate performance of a company or an industry. Industry averages help individual companies benchmark themselves versus their peers. They can also give you a good indication of the state of an industry – profitability, average costs, margins, growth, etc.

Industry ratios can be found in the following databases in our library collection. Below you will also find some strategies you can use to easily find ratios in our databases. 

•  = Users listed next to this icon have access on campus. (This will often say ALL indicating all users have access on campus. There are a few exceptions.) 
•  = Users listed next to this icon have access off campus.

Search tips:

• “Worldwide Industry Market Reports” have an “Industry ratios” section.  Also see First Research below, since these reports are also available in this database.

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• Search for Barnes reports (same reports as “Worldwide Industry Market Reports”) - ask for interlibrary loan

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• Look for the “Financial Information” section in these reports. Ratios are available for various company sizes: large, medium and small. Original source is Microbilt. Valuation multiples also available; original source is DealStats.

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• Plunkett research reports have a dedicated section where you can check out information about the balance sheet and cash flow of the industry as a whole, as well as for the top publicly held companies in that industry. 

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• Financial information available in the “Competitive Landscape” section, under “Cost Structure Benchmarks”.

Search tips:

• Click on reports or ratios. Ratios available for US or broken down by geographic region and by value of assets.

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• Ratios available under “Industry Analysis”.

Search tips:

• From Analytics, go to the Financial ratios tab, then to Financial Ratios: Industry Level. You will need to choose the industry segmentation that you are most interested in (up to 49 industries). Select from a list of ratios and as well as other criteria linked to format and run the query. Once submitted, click on the query number at the top of the page to retrieve results. Click on the link under Output files to get the desired information.
• The database includes over 70 financial ratios grouped into the following seven categories: Capitalization, Efficiency, Financial Soundness/Solvency, Liquidity, Profitability, Valuation and others – A manual is available on the website if you need additional help on how to use the resource.  

BizStats

EDUCBA – Finance formula – explains how to calculate ratios