Babson College LibGuides - Industry Information

Financial Ratios - Why Use Them?

If you would like to analyze a company's performance or benchmark it against its competitors, look at some financial ratios or comparables to help with your analysis.
Using ratios, you can compare a company's financial performance to the industry average and reveal relationships between items appearing on balance sheets & income statements. For example, current assets to current liabilities, or net income to net sales.
Most ratio sources are industry based and organized by industry codes: SIC or NAICS

Guide: SIC/NAICS
Learn more about SIC/NAICS
Tutorial: Finding NAICS Codes
Learn how to identify the NAICS code for your industry.
Length: < 2 minutes
Tutorial: Finding Industry Ratios
Learn how to find an industry ratio.
Length: < 2 minutes

RMA e-Statement Studies
Instruction Guide
Search by keyword or NAICS code. Since few keywords are used in this database, be sure to try synonyms (automobile vs. car) or use the industry drop down to find your industry.
BizMiner
Instruction Guide
Drill down into more than 2.5 million reports on over 10,000 lines of business. Customize reports to get industry profiles by sales size & industry code.
Value Line Research Center
Instruction Guide
On the main page under Subscriber Index, click on the Value Line Investment Survey Online - Standard Edition. Click on Lookup Industry in the left menu. Click on the pdf of the industry.
Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage
Instruction Guide
Provides an overview of key industry ratios & statistics for each of the industries they cover.
IBISWorld
Instruction Guide
Industry market research reports cover 1,000s of industries in the U.S. economy by NAICS code.
In the Key Statistics section of each report you will find industry ratios & statistics.