Web-Based Solution delivers relevant qualitative analytics.

Press Release Summary:



Designed for institutional investors and corporate executives, FirstRain® Management Monitor focuses on management transparency and turnover when assessing company strategy and execution. Web-based analytics distill dispersed information into data points and trends poignant data to proper parties. All management comments and refusals to comment are delivered to user, organized by industry topics and companies at issue, to make data directly applicable to immediate decision making.



Original Press Release:



FirstRain Introduces FirstRain Management Monitor(TM)



New Class of Analytics Provides Management Transparency for Institutional Investors and Corporate Executives

FOSTER CITY, Calif., Jan. 28 -- FirstRain(R), the leading provider of search-driven research, today announced the release of the FirstRain Management Monitor -- the first in a new generation of qualitative analytics packages -- which includes three initial reports: On the Record Report(TM), No Comment Report(TM) and Management Turnover Report(TM).

FirstRain Management Monitor focuses on management transparency and turnover -- critical issues when assessing the strategy and execution of a company. This new class of web-based analytics distills massive volumes of dispersed information into concise data points and trends that matter to investment professionals and corporate executives.

"Having an edge on insights into management is fundamental to generating superior returns," said Peter Madej, research analyst at Sustainable Growth Advisers, LP. "The FirstRain Management Monitor allows me to track emergent signals for what is or is not being said, as well as in hiring, attrition and reorganization. It finds me incremental data points which I can pursue and question company management about."

FirstRain Management Monitor

o The FirstRain On the Record Report extracts and highlights management quotes from a vast range of differentiated and authoritative web sources allowing FirstRain users to see what is being said -- officially or unofficially by executives, management and company representatives -- and to identify inconsistent disclosure, unauthorized comments and insightful commentary.
o The FirstRain No Comment Report finds instances when companies, employees and spokespeople decline to comment. FirstRain users derive insight on a company, not only from seeing which topics a company declines to comment on, but even more when a spokesperson declines to comment but an unauthorized comment appears in a blog or local newspaper.
o The FirstRain Management Turnover Report compiles both announced and unannounced changes to executive and senior management, such as hires, departures and internal moves, for 85% of global equities traded by U.S. managers. These events are captured from a wide range of signals that appear across the web and reported to clients via email. By highlighting trends in management turnover, FirstRain enables analysts to compare and contrast trends in leadership instability and risk.

All management comments and refusals to comment are delivered to the user organized by the industry topics and companies at issue, making the information directly applicable to immediate decision making. Additionally, analysts can use the FirstRain research database for historical trend analysis and backtesting.

New generation of analytics

"FirstRain Management Monitor changes the rules of research with a new class of analytics: Qualitative Analytics," said Penny Herscher, president and CEO of FirstRain. "Just as over the last 20 years the field of quantitative analytics has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry, we are now seeing the genesis of systems designed to derive analytics from the vast pools of qualitative information on the web."

FirstRain Management Monitor is the first commercially available qualitative analytics package designed for institutional investors and corporate executives. The web has become the top resource for research but has, until now, been difficult for the professional user to mine systematically. This is because of the difficulty of modeling business concepts through keyword search, the chaotic volume and distribution of information, the inefficiency of existing tools for collecting and extracting information, and the high incidence of repetition. By applying state-of-the- art search, extraction and pattern detection technology to the web, FirstRain makes it possible to generate adaptive models of business concepts and trend critical information which was previously too widely dispersed or obscure to find.

To learn more about the field of search-driven research and qualitative analytics go to www.firstrain.com/ where FirstRain has published three white papers on 1) using the web for equity research, 2) strategies for validating data from web sources, and 3) qualitative analytics.

About FirstRain

FirstRain changes the rules of research by applying state-of-the-art search, extraction and pattern detection technology to the web. As the leader in search-driven research, FirstRain products provide institutional investors and corporate executives with a powerful information advantage by uncovering information that they would not otherwise see. FirstRain is a privately held company with more than 150 employees, headquartered in Foster City, Calif., with additional offices in New York, NY and Gurgaon, India. Contact FirstRain at www.firstrain.com/.

CONTACT: Izumi Barker of FirstRain, Inc., +1-650-356-9076, ibarker@firstrain.com; or Evonne Lum of Ogilvy Public Relations, +1-415-677-2704, Evonne.lum@ogilvypr.com, for FirstRain, Inc.

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