Company Information?

Question

I am trying to find information regarding a public company. Specifically information about a number of privately held companies that this company purchaed between 1998-2002.

I have looked on the SEC website - I'm currently trying to learn how best to use it - and I hoping to get some info there. What forms (10k, 8K etc) should I look in for this sort of info? Are there any other sorts of forms or addenda that I should be looking for? Are there better (free) sources for this information?

Also btw, I see that the company had 10k forms for 2000 and for 2002, but none for 2001 is this odd/bad? I think a couple of the companies were bought in 2000 and thought they might have shown up in the 2001 reports.

Answer 1

The SEC has a good explanation what you can find on each form.

There should be at least one 10k form in each accounting year to publish the annual report but if they change the lenght of their accounting year it might happen that no 10K report is due in one civil year (it isn't unusual for companies to change their accounting year after a series of mergers).

Whereas the acquisition might be announced on a 8K, there is no legal duty to keep making announced about the integration on 8K since "ongoing integration" is obviously not a material issue for the company.