Company Information Subject Guide
Definitions
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There are two kinds of companies: private companies and public companies.
Public company/ corporation
A company whose stock is held by the general public rather than by officers or employees of the company.
Private company/ corporation
A company whose stock is held by the officers or employees of the company rather than the general public.
Desk Collection HF 1042 .N67x 1997
North American Industry Classification System (NAIC). The United States has a new industry classification system. NAIC was developed in cooperation with Canada and Mexico and classifies North America's economic activities at 2-, 3-, 4- and 5- levels of detail and the U.S. version of NAICS further defines some industries to a 6th digit. It will help provide comparable statistics across the three countries.
All companies are assigned a SIC and/or NAIC code. A SIC code (Standard Industrial Classification Number) or NAIC (North American Industry Classification code) is a system of classifying economic activities by four to five digit numbers. The numbers were established under the supervision of the Bureau of the Budget for the purposes of gathering, tabulating, and analyzing data on the manufacturing areas of economic endeavor.
Standard Industrial Classification Manual
Desk Collection HF 1041 .S8x 1987
This book will give you the definition of each SIC code. It is divided into manufacturing, retail, wholesale, and service industries.
CUSIP
The Committee on Uniform Securities Identification Procedures assigns all identification numbers and codes to securities. These numbers and codes are used in electronic reporting of markets and in the recording of all buy and sell orders.
Division
An internal unit of a company, not incorporated.
DUN's Number
The Data Universal Numbering System, a numerical method of identifying businesses designed and maintained by Dun and Bradstreet and published as a part of a list of firms, giving information on the firms, such as management personnel, finances, size, etc. Also called Dun's number or Dun's Market Identifier.
OTC (Over-the-counter)
Securities transactions that take place outside an organized stock exchange. Most new issues of unknown corporations are handled over-the-counter.
Parent Company
A company that exercises control over one or more subsidiary enterprises.
Subsidiary
A chartered business owned by the company at 50% or more.
Trading Symbol
Also known as stock symbol or ticker symbol. A letter symbol for common stock assigned each company that trades on the stock exchange(s). There are two different sets of abbreviations or symbols for each company stock: newspaper symbols such as those found in the Wall Street Journal and the symbols used by the stock exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange. Tradingcharts.com and Pink Sheets allow you to search by company name to find the trading symbol and by trading symbol to find the company name.