Parsing Functions in edgarWebR

Micah J Waldstein micah@waldste.in

2017-10-12

New to edgarWebR 0.2.0 are functions for parsing SEC documents. While there are good R packages for XBRL processing, there is a gap in extracting information from other document types available via the site. edgarWebR currently provides functions for 2 of those -

This vignette will show how to use both functions to find the risks reported by in a company’s recent filing.

Find a Submission

Using edgarWebR functions, we’ll first look up a recent filing.

ticker <- "STX"

filings <- company_filings(ticker, type = "10-Q", count = 40)
# Specifying the type provides all forms that start with 10-, so we need to
# manually filter.
filings <- filings[filings$type == "10-Q", ]
# We're only interested in a particular filing
filing <- filings[filings$filing_date == "2017-10-27", ]
filing$md_href <- paste0("[Link](", filing$href, ")")
knitr::kable(filing[, c("type", "filing_date", "accession_number", "size",
                                "md_href")],
             col.names = c("Type", "Filing Date", "Accession No.", "Size", "Link"),
             digits = 2,
             format.args = list(big.mark = ","))
Type Filing Date Accession No. Size Link
7 10-Q 2017-10-27 0001193125-17-323042 6 MB Link

Get the Complete Submission File

We’ll next get the list of files and find the link to the complete submission.

docs <- filing_documents(filing$href)
doc <- docs[docs$description == 'Complete submission text file', ]
doc$md_href <- paste0("[Link](", doc$href, ")")

knitr::kable(doc[, c("seq", "description", "document", "size",
                     "md_href")],
             col.names = c("Sequence", "Description", "Document",
                           "Size", "Link"),
             digits = 2,
             format.args = list(big.mark = ","))
Sequence Description Document Size Link
12 NA Complete submission text file 0001193125-17-323042.txt 6,983,971 Link

Normally, we would use filing_documents() to get to the 10-Q directly, but as an example we’ll be using the complete submission file to demonstrate the parse_submission() function. You would want to use the complete submission file if you want to access the full list of files - e.g. in this case there are 80 files in the submission, but only 10 available on the website and therefore available to filing_documents() - or if you worry about efficiency and are downloading all of the documents.

Parse the Complete Submission File

Now that we have the link to the complete submission file, we can parse it into components.

parsed_docs <- parse_submission(doc$href)
knitr::kable(head(parsed_docs[, c("SEQUENCE", "TYPE", "DESCRIPTION", "FILENAME")]),
             col.names = c("Sequence", "Type", "Description", "Document"),
             digits = 2,
             format.args = list(big.mark = ","))
Sequence Type Description Document
1 10-Q 10-Q d432283d10q.htm
2 EX-10.1 EX-10.1 d432283dex101.htm
3 EX-10.3 EX-10.3 d432283dex103.htm
4 EX-10.4 EX-10.4 d432283dex104.htm
5 EX-31.1 EX-31.1 d432283dex311.htm
6 EX-31.2 EX-31.2 d432283dex312.htm

And just for example, here’s the end of the full list - note the excel that isn’t on the SEC site for instance.

knitr::kable(tail(parsed_docs[, c("SEQUENCE", "TYPE", "DESCRIPTION", "FILENAME")]),
             col.names = c("Sequence", "Type", "Description", "Document"),
             digits = 2,
             format.args = list(big.mark = ","))
Sequence Type Description Document
82 82 XML IDEA: XBRL DOCUMENT R65.htm
83 83 EXCEL IDEA: XBRL DOCUMENT Financial_Report.xlsx
84 84 XML IDEA: XBRL DOCUMENT Show.js
85 85 XML IDEA: XBRL DOCUMENT report.css
86 87 XML IDEA: XBRL DOCUMENT FilingSummary.xml
87 89 ZIP IDEA: XBRL DOCUMENT 0001193125-17-323042-xbrl.zip

The 10-Q Filing document is Seq. 1, with the full text of the document in the TEXT column.

# NOTE: the filing document is not always #1, so it is a good idea to also look
# at the type & Description
filing_doc <- parsed_docs[parsed_docs$TYPE == '10-Q' &
                          parsed_docs$DESCRIPTION == '10-Q', 'TEXT']
substr(filing_doc, 1, 80)
#> [1] "<HTML><HEAD>\n<TITLE>10-Q</TITLE>\n</HEAD>\n <BODY BGCOLOR=\"WHITE\">\n<h5 align=\"left"

We can see that contains the raw document. For document types which are not plain text, e.g. the XBRL zip file, the content is uuencoded and would been further processing.

Parse the Filing Document

Fortunately edgaWebR functions that take URL’s will also take a string containing the document, so to parse the document, while we could have passed the URL to the online document we can just pass in the full string.

doc <- parse_filing(filing_doc, include.raw = TRUE)
unique(doc$part.name)
#> [1] ""        "PART I"  "PART II"
unique(doc$item.name)
#>  [1] ""                                                                                             
#>  [2] "ITEM 1. FINANCIAL STATEMENTS"                                                                 
#>  [3] "ITEM 2. MANAGEMENT'S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS"
#>  [4] "ITEM 3. QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK"                           
#>  [5] "ITEM 4. CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES"                                                              
#>  [6] "ITEM 1. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS"                                                                    
#>  [7] "ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS"                                                                        
#>  [8] "ITEM 2. UNREGISTERED SALES OF EQUITY SECURITIES AND USE OF PROCEEDS"                          
#>  [9] "ITEM 3. DEFAULTS UPON SENIOR SECURITIES"                                                      
#> [10] "ITEM 4. MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES"                                                              
#> [11] "ITEM 5. OTHER INFORMATION"                                                                    
#> [12] "ITEM 6. EXHIBITS"
head(doc[grepl("market risk", doc$item.name, ignore.case = TRUE), "text"], 3)
#> [1] "ITEM 3. QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE DISCLOSURES ABOUT MARKET RISK"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
#> [2] "We have exposure to market risks due to the volatility of interest rates, foreign currency exchange rates, credit rating changes, equity and bond markets. A portion of these risks may be hedged, but fluctuations could impact our results of operations, financial position and cash flows."                                                                                                                                                                                                         
#> [3] "Interest Rate Risk. Our exposure to market risk for changes in interest rates relates primarily to our investment portfolio. As of September 29, 2017, we had no available-for-sale securities that had been in a continuous unrealized loss position for a period greater than 12 months. The Company determined no available-for-sale securities were other-than-temporarily impaired as of September 29, 2017. We currently do not use derivative financial instruments in our investment portfolio."
risks <- doc[grepl("market risk", doc$item.name, ignore.case = TRUE), "raw"]

Now the document is all ready for whatever further processing we want. As a quick example we’ll pull out all the italicized risks.

risks <- risks[grep("<i>", risks)]
risks <- gsub("^.*<i>|</i>.*$", "", risks)
risks <- gsub("\n", " ", risks)
risks
#> [1] "Interest Rate Risk"             "Foreign Currency Exchange Risk"
#> [3] "Derivatives and Hedging. "      "Other Market Risks"

This is a fairly simplistic example, but should serve as a good tutorial on processing filings.

How to Download

edgarWebR is available from CRAN, so can be simply installed via

install.packages("edgarWebR")

If you want the latest and greatest, you can get a copy of the development version from github by using devtools:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("mwaldstein/edgarWebR")