Free Download of Annual Reports of Listed Indian Companies in PDF

Preface

As a sensible stock market investor, the first and foremost thing you need to do before investing in any company is to read its annual reports. Preferably, it has to be for the last economic cycle, i.e., the past 10 years, or the least the past 5 years. By the way, an annual report is a comprehensive report on the preceding year’s activities of a company and the future intentions of the management. Accordingly, annual reports and financial statements include the balance sheet, profit and loss account, and cash flow statement of a company.

Therefore, go through a few annual reports, and you get a fair picture on where the company is headed. Moreover, there is nothing hard to read and interpret the financial statements if you are good at elementary school math. Meanwhile, see how to read an annual report to have a general idea about what to look in them.

Competitors’ reports

Whereas if you could go through the annual reports of the competitors as well, you have done almost all the needed homework before investing. Thus you would have got a clear opinion on the company you are interested. Likewise, you could find analysts’ opinion everywhere; on the Internet, TVs, newspapers, business magazines etc. However, forming your own opinion about a company that you intend to invest is very much important than heeding to analysts’ opinion. In short, it helps you separate wheat from chaff yourself!

Where do I get the ARs?

All right. But where could I find a collection of the annual reports of Indian companies for free online in PDF format and the financial numbers in Excel format? Where else? Of course the bourses where their stocks are listed! The major stock exchanges of India started to host the annual reports of the listed companies from 2010. Hence they are our major source of information of any stock that you intend to buy. As the companies cannot evade annual reports from the bourses where their stocks are listed, you can definitely find annual reports for the maximum years available at the websites of the two major stock exchanges, National Stock Exchange (NSE) and Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). So, our first choice would be to search the websites of these two stock exchanges.

I read annual reports of the company I’m looking at, and I read the annual reports of the competitors. That’s the main source material.

–Warren Buffett

Websites of stock exchanges

1. Go to the corporate information archives at NSE India. Start typing the name of the company you are interested in the provided search box for “Company.” An AutoSuggest menu will begin to appear. Choose the company’s symbol and hit search. There you have the annual reports listed year wise! Click the link of whichever financial year for which you need the annual report. Download the report in zipped format.
2. Go to the quote page of BSE India. Start typing the name of the company you are interested in the “Get Quote” search box provided. An AutoSuggest menu will begin to appear. Choose the company’s symbol and click. On the search results page, look for the link “Annual Reports” under “Financials” in the left side panel. Click on that. You will be taken to the annual reports archives of that particular company. Click the link of whichever financial year for which you need the annual report. Download the annual report in PDF format.

Other websites

1. Go to Money Control. Start typing the name of the company you are interested in the search box on that page. An AutoSuggest menu will begin to appear. Choose your favorite company’s symbol and click. On the search results page, look for the link to “Annual Report” on the left pane. You can download the report as PDF. Otherwise, you can read the report on screen itself disseminated into Directors’ Report, Chairman’s Speech, Auditor’s Report, Notes to Accounts, Accounting Policy etc. Furthermore, you have the option of exporting the financial numbers (balance sheet, profit and loss account etc.) to Excel format on the site itself and then download as an Excel sheet.
2. Now if you have been patiently reading until here, there is a shortcut for you to get the annual reports from both the bourses at a place. Go to Screener. Start typing the name of your favorite company in the search box provided. An AutoSuggest menu will begin to appear. Choose the company’s symbol and click. You will be taken to the search results page where you would be presented with a detailed analysis that includes pros and cons of the stock currently. You get all the key information disseminated. At the end of the page, you can find the links to annual reports hosted on both the servers of NSE and BSE. You kill two birds in one shot! Click the link of whichever financial year for which you need the annual report. Download the annual report.

Old annual reports

However, the limitation here is that the bourses started to provide soft copies of annual reports in PDF format only from 2010. So you may not be able to find the ARs prior to that in the aforementioned resources.

Therefore, the only choice left behind to download annual reports of a company prior to 2010 would be nonetheless the company’s own website. You should be able to get all the soft copies of the annual reports that the company has from there. If you are not aware of the website address of the company you are interested, just Google and find it out. Go the company’s website and look for “Investor Relations” link. There you may be able to find annual reports listed under “Financials.”

And now, over to you: Apart from the resources I mentioned above, do you know any other resource where you can get annual reports of listed companies in India for free?