Publicly-held companies with stock traded on U.S. exchanges publish annual reports and submit filings to the U.S Securities Exchange Commission (SEC).

Annual Reports (also known as Annual Reports to Shareholders, or "Glossy" Annual Reports) are published for the benefit of shareholders and are not required by the SEC.  While the financial information in annual reports is audited, the narrative portions are not. Thus, annual reports may also be used by companies as public relations tools and as a means for communicating company operations in a positive light.

SEC filings are required by law and are considered the most definitive and complete source of essential company information, requiring companies to disclose specific details of securities offerings and operations. Various filings are required of companies depending on the information they are required to disclose. One such SEC filing, Form 10-K, is required annually from US public companies and contains extended financials and other details about company operations.

Other filings included in our collection may provide further details about a company or provide financials for years where no annual report or 10-K filing is available. Some sources in our collection are produced by third party publishers based on financials extracted from SEC filings.

The Corporate Reports Collection at MIT Dewey Library consists of annual reports, Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) filings (including 10Ks), and other sources of financial and textual information on public companies spanning over 150 years. Our collection includes a variety of sources in paper, electronic, and microfiche formats. However, there is no single index to all of the reports in our collection. Depending on your research goals, you may need to consult several sources.

For current annual reports & SEC filings, start with LexisNexis.  Also, public companies frequently post recent annual reports and SEC filings on their websites (look for an "Investor Relations" or similar link).

For historical reports and financial data, use this research guide to determine if the reports you need might be available in our collection:

• use the Types of Reports tab to discover the sources in our collection and their dates of coverage
• use the Sources A-to-Z tab for instructions and details about each individual source
• the Useful Websites tab suggests additional sources of help for corporate report researchers
• the Name Changes tab can help uncover prior names of companies over the years

Access to some annual reports products, including CD-ROM products, is available to current MIT faculty, students, and staff, as well as other special user types. Access to certain online and print reports is available only to current MIT community members. Please refer to the Sources page for more information on accessing a particular source.

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