Thomson Financial, an operating unit of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) and leading provider of information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community, announced today the launch of Thomson Guidance, a powerful analytical tool that identifies, aggregates and tracks qualitative and quantitative management expectations from multiple sources.
Designed to offer investment managers a more transparent barometer of a company's future performance, Thomson Guidance goes beyond the usual earnings guidance, EPS and revenue data, and combines corporate forward looking statements with quantitative content from a broad range of sources, and presents it in a concise, online format.
Thomson Guidance streamlines and consolidates the collection of qualitative and quantitative information, and makes it easily accessible in one place. It gathers company-specific statements from the industry's most extensive library of corporate transcripts, presentations and press releases, and provides direct links to each source document and full document revision history. The content extends beyond earnings guidance and includes more than 100 measures ranging from financial statements and key ratios, to business outlook and industry metrics. Financial analysts, portfolio managers and research directors are able to track management statements and expectations over time, without the influence of commentary or biases.
Thomson Guidance offers three views: company expectations on a security for all measures, which includes income statement, balance sheet, cash flow, industry metrics and qualitative; full revision history on a security for one measure at a time, and company expectations on a portfolio or index for two measures at a time. A Snapshot function provides flexible access to a composite view, or view of all measures and measure history, or excerpts of supporting management quotes with direct links to source documents for context. Thomson Guidance is being offered through Thomson ONE Investment Management, Thomson ONE Investment Management Web, Thomson StreetEvents and Thomson ONE Investor Relations.
"Thomson Financial started building this program when Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg. FD) went into effect and companies were required to publicly disclose a new level of information," said Andre Lavoie, vice president, Investment Management, Thomson Financial. "Thomson Guidance is the first analytical tool that seamlessly brings together expectations established by Wall Street, with expectations drawn directly from corporate management. By offering a more transparent, 360-degree view of a company, it greatly enhances the ability of institutional investors to evaluate investment opportunities. From a company's perspective, this is a positive development, for they gain insight from an institutional investor's point of view," said Lavoie.
It is expected that Thomson Guidance will cover 3,000 companies by the end of this year, with a focus on extending the U.S. centric content to include Europe.
Separately, Thomson Financial, an operating unit of The Thomson Corporation (TSX: TOC, NYSE: TOC) , and leading provider of information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community, today announced that it has opened an office in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).
Assem O. Kabesh, Chief Business Development Officer and Board Member at the DIFC, said: "Access to reliable market and historical data is important to ensure transparency of financial markets, in line with the high standards set at the DIFC. Investors, lenders and corporates will undoubtedly benefit from Thomson’s leading data services and ability to accurately quantify the region's growing financial markets."
Mark Jackson, Head of Middle East Sales, Thomson Financial, commented: "Thomson Financial has had the privilege of working with financial services companies in the Middle East region for over 10 years. The launch of the Dubai office fits perfectly with our strategy to drive international growth and secure important new revenue streams. Our clients are eager for us to participate in the regions development in relation to market transparency and disclosure, given our unique position in providing workflow solutions for the Investment Management, Investment Banking and Corporate communities. We are excited by the opportunities presented from developing our Middle East business from the dynamic and innovative environment which the DIFC provides."
Thomson Financial has a range of solutions offered to clients through its market leading Thomson ONE application framework. Allowing for the easy integration of content and tools from Thomson Financial, third parties and clients own proprietary systems; Thomson ONE can be configured to the specific needs of the Investment Management, Investment Banking, Private Equity, Wealth Management, Corporate, Institutional Equity, Institutional Research and Fixed Income communities.
Thomson ONE draws on content contained within Thomson Financial's market leading products which include Thomson Datastream the world's largest historical time series database, Thomson First Call and IBES Estimates, Thomson SDC deal data and Thomson Worldscope fundamentals.
Finally, Thomson Financial has signed an agreement with Estarta Solutions, an international IT solutions provider headquartered in Amman, Jordan, to provide sales and implementation support in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region for Thomson PORTIA.