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How do I get financial information (turnover, profit etc) for a competitor located in Canada?

Here in Sweden, there are several sites which can be used to get financial information. For instance, here are the numbers for Spotify: http://www.allabolag.se/5567037485/Spotify_AB

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3 Answers

If it's a public company you can look at their 10-K forms which are published annually.

For a private company there's probably no way, most of them do not disclose this information anywhere.

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Are there any site which publishes the 10-K forms? Or should the companies do that by themself? – jgauffin May 9 '12 at 17:12
In the US it's sec.gov , not sure what they have in Canada. – Salmon May 9 '12 at 20:53

You can try Sedar, Canada's equivalent to SEC.

With that said, there are different methods available. Though the following is primarily for the US market, it may be somewhat applicable outside the US.

First, companies (public or private) that earn a certain amount of revenue per year are often required to file forms with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission). Private corporations still have shares and shareholders, so certain transactions warrant filing of info with the SEC (i.e. Form D). I'd assume there may be similar controls outside the US.

Specific financial statements for private entities will be hard to come by. Now, even if you come across financial statements, private entities' accounting rules may be way out of whack, so it may be difficult to decipher useful information (try deciphering financial statements from public companies - even that's a difficult task).

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If you know the number of employees you can estimate the revenue multiplying this number by some average 'revenue per employee' (which is around 250k), there you can find some samples: http://www.jbryanscott.com/2009/02/07/nasdaq-100-revenue-per-employee/

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