Companies House - how to tell a company's financial condition

TOTAL

Hi

It was mentioned elsewhere in the forum that Companies House is a way to start checking the condition of a company - for example your employer. I have checked mine - and it turned out the company show in the search results many times. What does that mean?

I looked at a well known company for some point of reference, and again, it shows many results.
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/search?q=unilever

How to use the information found in Companies House? Or how else to check how a company is doing?

breakinthesun

Try to find the one with the same registered office address.

Once you click on the company profile, look at the company status - if it's active then the company is still trading. You can then look at filing history to see the accounts that have been published. If there is an active proposal to strike the company off and you are thinking about bringing a claim against them, you can write to companies house to object to the strike off. This will usually put a hold on any strike-off action which will help with proceeding against the company.

getmore4less

Companies often are loads of registered companies, different parts of a group. Where bits own other bits you have to build a tree.

For publicly traded companies the investor relation pages on the companies web site can be a better place to start.

bugslet

It's a way but doesn't tell you anything unless you know inside information.

Bugs Transport nearly went into a joint venture with another company an few years back and as part of the process we changed name and company registration for what was supposed to be a couple of months. Deal went wrong, and so we carried on trading as Bugs Transport II, but on the books we had a huge liablity as a result of 'buying' the assets of Bugs Transport I.

Hardly anyone would give us any credit, yet I could afford to go out and buy a truck and pay for it in cash.

steampowered

Click the "Companies" tab. The general search brings up other things such as director appointments.

For a major international company which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, such as Unilever - you will find much more information on the investors section on the companies website than you will on Companies House.

For a company like Unilever, it is likely that you are employed by a subsidiary in a larger corporate group. I imagine that Unilever plc is just a holding company - although Unilever plc will report group wide financial results to the market.

If your employer is not publicly listed, you might be able to get a set of annual accounts from Companies House but probably not much else.