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By Richard Drezen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 23, 1998; Page H2

The Internet is a gift from the heavens for researchers. Piles of information are now available in relatively easy-to-use form to anyone who knows where to start looking. Here is one such search that might interest local investors: What's available online about Mobil Corp., the Washington area's largest publicly traded corporation?

One starting point would be The Washington Post's Web site (www.washingtonpost.com). By logging on to the site and going to the Business section, you just click on the annual Top 200 list of companies in the area. Mobil is perched at the top, and by clicking on it, you can find a basic company description, news coverage, financial information, its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and more.

The SEC's own Web site, (www.sec.gov) allows you to search its database of filings since January 1994 in its "Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis & Retrieval System," known simply as Edgar. The site can be difficult to navigate, especially because typos aren't forgiven. It is essential to enter accurately the full company name – Mobil Corp.

Just typing Mobil will give you information on other companies with the word "mobil" in their name. Correctly entering Mobil Corp. at the Edgar search prompt will retrieve more than 110 documents, listed by their legal (and confusing) name. Annual reports are called 10-Ks and quarterly filings are 10-Qs. The proxy (called a DEF14A) will tell you that chief executive Lucio A. Noto received a raise in his base salary last year taking him to $930,000 (excluding bonus, stock options and other compensation). Recent "shelf registration" statements, called S-3s, confirm that Mobil may want to raise capital periodically. A recent 8-K that reports recent unscheduled material events or corporate changes noted that 1998's second-quarter earnings weren't quite as good as this time last year.

To find Mobil's own Web site, (www.mobil.com), you could either guess at its name – many firms simply use their name, followed by .com (for commercial), but others don't – or try a site called CompaniesOnline (www.companiesonline.com). Much of the information there is geared toward the investor. Aside from the requisite financial information, there is a photograph of and biographical list of Mobil's board of directors (12 men and two women). Results from votes at the last annual meeting are also listed. Mobil also provides a two-year archive of press releases and allows one to automatically receive all Mobil news via e-mail if desired.

The latest on Mobil's stock price can be found on almost any personal finance or investing site.

Microsoft Investor's Web site (www.investor.msn.com) delivers basic and detailed quote information on Mobil as well as other fundamental data. Investorama's Web site (www.investorama.com) is another source for Mobil stock information. When you enter Mobil's stock symbol, you receive information culled from more than 75 Web sites. Some of these require a subscription fee, but most are free. Investorama and Quicken (www.quicken.com) also offer message boards. These allow potential investors to post electronically their queries concerning specific stocks. A cursory check for Mobil found many questions about how the company's stock was performing in the market.

Wall Street's own research reports remain a rare find for free on the Internet, but some can be found for nominal cost. By going to the Public Registrar's Annual Report Service (www.prars.com) or Multex (www.multexnet.com), an investor can find out what Wall Street brokerages have been writing about Mobil and how copies can be obtained. Alas, they're not free. (Hint: Before going this route, consider contacting Mobil's investor relations office, via e-mail through the company's Web site or even by telephone. It is possible the office might be willing to share copies of recent research.)

To find out about Mobil's rivals, visit the Quicken site (see above) or Hoovers (www.hoovers.com) . Hoovers has one of the better company directory sites on the Internet.

Want to learn if corporate insiders (company officers, members of the board, etc.) have been buying or selling their own shares of company stock? This information is now available for free at Yahoo's site (www.yahoo.com).

Have you had enough yet? If not, you can try the CorpTech Database (www.corptech.com). The usual stuff is there, but there are categories such as "rankings" that include information such as the fact that Mobil added more than 4,000 employees to its payroll last year. Further serendipity at this site takes us to a map of the company's exact location in Virginia and lists the current weather.