In today’s market, getting ahead of the competition means acting on information before most are even privy to it. Broker research proves to contain more than just the essential information needed for a professional to navigate an industry. Many are unaware of the lucrative insights packed within these reports, spotlighting sector opportunities ripe for investment and strategic business action.
However, it has been historically difficult for corporate professionals to access this research, consequently limiting visibility on new market developments.
At this point, many corporate professionals know this research is valuable but they are not always sure what exactly these reports entail. The information found within is both differentiated from other content sources and proves highly valuable as part of any market research workflow, whether that be M&A monitoring, market landscaping, competitive intelligence, or benchmarking. Ultimately, these insights aren’t found in company documents, press releases or news articles, and can give you the edge in a data-driven competitive landscape.
Unlike most market intelligence platforms, AlphaSense aggregates exclusive real-time and aftermarket equity research from global investment banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, and Bank of America within our Wall Street Insights® collection. Corporate strategy teams can search across reports from thousands of industry analyst contributors all in one centralized location—without the need for 1:1 relationships with brokers or traditional entitlements.
By including analyst research into workflows, strategists can build a competitive advantage by unlocking insights that others miss when they rely solely on publicly available—and often incomplete—company and industry documents. So how can broker research benefit you and your team? Below, we dive into this exciting content source and the value proposition it can add to an organization.
What You’ll Find in Broker Research
Broker research contains priceless information for every job function within an organization, from C-Suite leadership to competitive researchers to M&A teams. While earnings transcripts, trade journals, and expert interviews provide integral context to industry trends and intel on market dynamics, equity research possesses invaluable perspectives around the “why” behind market movements that you won’t find anywhere else.
Equity research analysts are deep subject matter experts who are often former executives, industry veterans, or academics. These analysts conduct in-depth research and publish reports on corporations, industries, and macro trends, offering an expert lens into a subject.
For corporations, the value of equity research lies in the detailed coverage of their company, their competitors, and how they can strategize around specific markets. These reports allow strategists to combine context from top-down industry reports with bottom-up peer analysis, on topics like M&A, capex, capital investment, macro conditions, supply chains, and industry headwinds.
When searching through broker research on AlphaSense, users also get the same benefits that exist for other content sets across the platform, including keyword search features such as Smart Synonyms and multi-factor relevance score sorting, which helps users instantly find the most relevant documents.
Through the AlphaSense platform, businesses making strategic plans or product decisions, conducting competitive analysis, evaluating M&A, or engaging in investor relations are tapping into the deep industry expertise of Wall Street’s top analysts.
Types of Broker Research Reports
A typical equity research report includes in-depth industry research, management analysis, financial histories, trends, forecasting, valuations, and recommendations for investors. But the scope and insights of a report can vary—making it all the more important to have unfettered access to reports from the top Wall Street broker firms.
Here are the types of broker research reports most relevant to corporate professionals:
Industry Reports
Industry reports help firms assess market dynamics and trends, as well as understand competition within the industry. These reports provide a long-term forecast of potential industry changes and what the implications of those headwinds may be. Industry-specific reports typically dive into additional factors such as TAM, investment figures, macro impacts, geographic considerations, growth forecasts, and M&A coverage.
See Industry Reports in AlphaSense here.
Company Reports
Company reports provide an ongoing analysis of the company’s performance and include buy, hold, sell ratings, updated news, M&A activity, and any other information that can impact the valuation of a company.
See Company Reports in AlphaSense here.
Initiation Reports
Initiation reports give you an in-depth analysis of a company, including an investment thesis, financial forecasts, key differentiators in product (including roadmap and unique technology or science), market strengths and risks, and upcoming milestones or events. Additionally, they cover the divisions and products of a company to provide a baseline of what a company is and how it is performing.
See Initiation Reports in AlphaSense here.
Flash Reports
Also known as earning recaps, flash reports are a quick 1-2 page report that comments on a news release from a company, summarizes earnings releases, or other quick information. These shorter reports are commonly issued after a news release or other important event related to a company or industry occurs. They contain expert commentary from analysts that help companies make decisions based on new information and developments.
See Flash Reports in AlphaSense here.
Competitive Insights
Analysts are an excellent source not only for recommendations and forecasts, but for a better understanding of market dynamics, larger financial shifts, and potential opportunities for expansion, investment, or risk assessments. They provide varied outlooks that guide corporate strategists in a specific direction. In addition, analyst research often includes the input of industry experts (other than the research analysts) and leading consultants, along with survey data and other extensive proprietary data.
Here are some of the key use cases where broker research adds significant value to your research, beyond what you can find in other sources:
Market Landscapes
Corporations find a wide range of valuable market-based content in Wall Street research reports, including market assessments (i.e, size, share, forecasts), competitive analyses, expert commentary, emerging trends and technologies, and proprietary data. This research simplifies the process of parsing through large volumes of data looking for nuggets of information around market segments and TAM.
Armed with this data, they can validate assumptions about industry trends, competitors, and opportunities, as well as generate strategic recommendations based on industry themes.
For example, a corporate strategist for a coffee company that is considering expansion into new markets could search for “coffee and china” in AlphaSense, and filter for Broker Research. The result? Numerous industry-focused reports that may discuss wide-ranging topics from coffee consumption trends to market share, pricing, and more.
Applying filters allows our users to further sort through the search results by industry, country, or company market cap—honing in on specific perspectives from different coverage areas.
Industry Forecasts
A large part of a corporate strategist’s role is forecasting and anticipating where the market is headed. Broker research gets these professionals up to speed quickly on specific industry trends, as well as macro events that impact certain verticals.
Equity research analysts must be conversant with the business regulations and political dynamics to decide how it will affect not just the market environment, but business in general. The more you understand the industries in detail, the easier it will be for you to decipher market dynamics.
Examples of forecasting data include:
- Market Dynamics (e.g. market size, market share, market growth/forecasts)
- Calculate total addressable market and future trends
- Explanations of emerging technologies or science and detailed technology roadmaps
Deep Company Knowledge
An equity research analyst specializes in a group of companies in a particular industry or country to develop high-level expertise and produce accurate projects and recommendations. These analysts monitor market data and news reports, and speak to contacts within the companies and industries they study to update their research daily.
With the company reports found in broker research, corporations can monitor peers and market share trends that include deep, relevant context of the industry. They can also conduct due diligence and identify and evaluate companies for M&A, investment, and partnership opportunities. Plus, they can dive deep into customers, partners, and prospects to understand their priorities, strengths and weaknesses, and current challenges.
Macro Trends
Analysts develop in-depth historical knowledge while remaining abreast of current market events and trends, handling the challenging job of separating important macro signals from industry or regulatory noise.
By analyzing macro regulatory and economic trends, broker research can tell you how market inflections, interest rates, socioeconomic factors, and major events may affect your firm’s strategy. It can alert companies to regulatory changes that occur as new technologies and innovations emerge, as well as provide regional outlooks on a specific geographic market, for expansion opportunities, risk assessments, and investment ideas.
Leverage Broker Research with AlphaSense
Without the context broker research provides to industry trends and market movements, your decision-making and strategy are susceptible to misinformation and fall short of driving results. To win big in your sector, you need a market intelligence platform that not only provides access to a premium collection of broker research but helps you separate the crucial insights from the noise.
By using Wall Street Insights® (WSI) collection to access broker research from top global analysts and strategists, corporate strategy professionals can instantly find the most relevant information within tens of thousands of research reports.
WSI is the leading collection of equity research covering global sector themes, industries, and companies from 1,000+ sell-side and independent firms—indexed, searchable, and all in one place.
In the corporate world, a need for highly specialized Wall Street, industry, and macroeconomic research sprouted during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, demand is peaking as businesses regularly tap into the deep industry expertise of Wall Street’s top analysts to devise strategic plans or product decisions, conduct competitive analysis, or evaluate M&As. Download our report, The Corporate Guide to Wall Street Research, to learn how this invaluable content source can help take the lead.
Start your free trial of AlphaSense today.
