In fact, VentureLine's MBA strongly disagrees with this approach and believes it may allow less than accurate and possibly falsified data to be used during company and industry analyses. VentureLine's MBA refuses to accept any data directly from a publicly traded company within the VentureLine company database, or from privately held companies to be used in the industry database.
Recent corporate revelations and events indicate that financial data contained in annual reports, questionnaires, or loan applications from companies should not be taken at face value and used for financial analysis or investment decisions. At VentureLine, for publicly traded companies, we only use data that is traceable to data submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through legally mandated and controlled 10-Q, for quarterly results, and, audited 10-K, for annual results, SEC filings.
For industry analysis, VentureLine's MBA only uses data traceable to the 10-Q and audited 10-K SEC filings. This tends to lessen the size of the resultant industry database somewhat, but it brings a needed veracity to the data contained therein. Data that has not been validated should not be used to assess the performance of any industry. VentureLine believes you, as an MBA member, would prefer an accurate database as compared to using a somewhat larger database containing data from un-audited and possibly misleading questionnaires, loan applications, tax returns, and self-serving annual reports.
The end result of the VentureLine approach to company and industry analysis is that we provide you, our MBA members, with information that is, to the best of our knowledge, the most accurate and reliable.