Database Tutorial: Mergent Online: Do a Side-by-Side Financial Comparison

To do a side-by-side financial comparison between your company and its top competitors, or your own list of other companies, click on the Competitors tab in your company's profile. In the example below, a list of P&G's competitors in the US is automatically generated by the database. You can add additional companies, or X out the ones you don't want in your comparison. Some of the popular metrics like revenues, EBITA, etc., are also listed: 

After you are done picking the companies you want to include in the comparison, click on Add all to Company Analysis List (on the right side of the same page, just above the table):

It will show you how many companies will be added (11 in this example -- you can add up to 500). Click on the Company Analysis List link: 

On the new window that pops up, click on Company Comparison Report (the default is Multiple Company Report):

You can now pick and choose the companies and items you want to compare. You can still X out companies at this point, or pick and choose only a few of them. You can add all of t hem by clicking on >>. Under Select Data Items, click on the plus (+) sign to reveal all the available items, then pick and choose the items you want. Pick the years, then report output format (HTML, Excel, etc.), then click Create Report:

If you pick HTML as the format, you will see something like this. If Excel, a spreadsheet will be automatically downloaded to your computer. 

Another way to do side-by-side comparison is to click on the Report Builder tab. You can compare your company with various types of competitors (top 10, top 50, all, etc.) in the primary industry (NAIC: North America Industry Classification), only in the target country (US in this example), or the entire world. 

You can compare multiple companies by generating a list of companies with specific criteria (country, industry, revenue, etc.), then creating a company comparison report based on the list.