How do I select and download individual financial line items for public companies?
Compustat provides North American and global financial statement and market data for over 80,000 active and inactive publicly traded companies in two separate databases: Compustat North America and Compustat Global.
To select and download individual financial line items from the financial statements for a U.S. public company such as Starbucks, follow the steps listed below:
1. From the WRDS home page, choose Compustat – Capital IQ
2. Choose North America
3. Select Fundamentals Annual.
4. Choose your date range.
5. Under Apply Your Company Codes, select Ticker Symbol (tic) and type the ticker symbol (Example: SBUX for Starbucks) into the search box.
6. Choose variable types. Search for specific variables (such as line items or company details) in the search bar above the full list of variables. Click on a variable to select it, and see a list of selected variables on the right side. You can also browse lists of line items by type of statement such as Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cash Flow. There are also tabs for Identifying Information, Company Descriptor, Miscellaneous Items and Supplemental Data Items.
7. Select Excel spreadsheet as the format for your data download. Click on the Submit Form button and when the data output is complete, a link to the Excel file will appear.
