EDGAR is the SEC's filing database. Every 10-K and every other filing in this course is in it. It is free and there is no account.
EDGAR is the SEC's filing database. Every 10-K and every other filing in this course is in it. It is free and there is no account.
Three things identify a filing.
The company. EDGAR gives each filer a Central Index Key. A CIK. It's a number and it never changes even when the company changes its name.
The form type. 10-K. 10-Q. 8-K. S-1. DEF 14A. You'll meet all of these over the next two weeks.
The accession number. That's the unique id of one filing. It looks like a phone number with dashes.
Company plus form type plus date gets you to the document. The accession number gets you to exactly one.
Costco's annual report for the year that ended September 3 2023.
Read the accession number. The first ten digits are the CIK of whoever transmitted it. The next two are the year. The last six are a counter. So 0000909832-23-000042 is the forty-second filing Costco sent in 2023.
The search itself is three steps. Search the company name. Filter by form type. Pick the period. Each filing opens on an index page that lists every document in it, and the main document is the long one at the top.
One more tool. EDGAR has full-text search across filings. Type an exact phrase in quotation marks and it tells you which documents contain it. That's how you check whether a company ever said a particular thing.
The trap is trusting a name.
Names repeat. Names change. Subsidiaries file under their own names. A search for a common company name returns filers that have nothing to do with the company you want. The CIK is the only identifier that doesn't move.
The example worth remembering. Costco Wholesale's CIK is 0000909832. There is a nearby number that belongs to an individual filer from the 1990s. Land on it by accident and you get two documents from 1998 that look like nothing you expected. Nothing warns you. The page loads and the filings are simply wrong.
So when a figure matters write down the CIK and the accession number next to it. Then anyone can land on the same page you did.
A colleague sends you a figure. Costco made $242 billion last year. He can't remember where he got it.
What do you search for?
Costco Wholesale Corporation on EDGAR. Then filter to form type 10-K.
Which filing covers the year he means?
The 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 3 2023. Filed October 11 2023. Accession number 0000909832-23-000042.
What does the filing actually say?
Total revenue of $242,290 million. His figure was right and now it has a source.
He asks why you bothered checking a number that turned out to be correct.
Because until it was checked there was no way to tell the correct number from the wrong one. Now the next person can land on the same page.
Ten minutes. Free. Nothing to install.
Take this class