AlphaSense is worth it!
Updated October 07, 2023
AlphaSense is worth it!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with AlphaSense
My role is focused on identifying new investment opportunities for our clients. Part of my research process to identify new companies to review is to perform word searches that would imply the presence of certain characteristics at a company that I feel is a good predictor of potential pitfalls at a given company. During the initial screening process, I use AlphaSense to efficiently review filings of various companies that have these characteristics. The process is made more efficient by the various filtering variables (i.e., market cap, country, industry, filing types reviewed, etc.) that are available. Lastly, the layout is helpful, as it is clear where in the filings the searched for 'word' or 'phrase' occurred. Therefore, AlphaSense helps me to efficiently review multiple company filings, as part of my initial steps at identifying new investment opportunities that I can publish research on.
- The layout of the central interface is very clear, as the user is able to see how many companies appear in a given word search, where in the filings the term/phrase occurred and the context of the term/phrase in the document.
- The filters make it an efficient review, as I can exclude companies that are not relevant to my search. For example, I only look at companies in Europe and USA that trade >$20m ADV, so I can exclude companies that are not in my universe by filtering out those companies. Ultimately, this saves me time by not looking at companies I cannot look at as a potential investment opportunity.
- The automated alerts are also helpful, as these help summarize new occurrences of my word search that are relevant. On a weekly basis, I get a summary of a word search term that is of interest to me. This helps summarize all of the relevant occurrences from new filings, which is easy to review. By being in an e-mail, I can review them on my phone on the way home from work.
- The product could be improved by expanding the ability to screen for insider buying/selling. It would be helpful to be able to get a summary of insider transactions for a given company on a weekly basis just to identify any material changes.
- It would be helpful for the product to provider blacklines for international (non-USA) companies. I find the USA blackline reports especially helpful, as I can quickly see what wording has changed from the previous filing. However, the blacklines appear to not be available for European companies.
- Lastly, peer and larger customer information would be helpful to have on a concise screen. Some filings mention material (>10% of sales) customers. Therefore, it would be helpful to have a pre-arranged option to see the material customers for a given company. As this would be based on a word search, I think the preset option (i.e., material customers) would be possible to add as a feature to Alphasense.
- AlphaSense has allowed us to more efficiently identify investment ideas. This is important given that a higher production rate of research allows us to generate higher subscription prices from clients.
- The comprehensive word searches allow us to very quickly attach companies to a specific item that is relevant. This results in us having deeper insights than would otherwise be possible just given how long it would take to search filings manually.
- The improvement in the ability to search European filings has been especially helpful, as this allows us to do more research in Europe which ultimately allows us to expand out client base. In the past, European filing word searches were problematic given the varied filing types and disclosures. However, in recent years this has improved a lot to where it is similar to searching USA filings.
The word search has been useful to understand what companies are relevant to a given market event. For example, if one company mentions that a certain project is performing well (or not), then AlphaSense allows us to very efficiently identify other companies that have exposure to that project. This allows us to very quickly see if there are other companies that could be good investment opportunities by being exposed to the same project. Ultimately, this leads to higher quality and quantity of research that clients can trade on.
Senteo also has a word search engine that I used in the past, but which, I didn't feel was as comprehensive or as easy to use as AlphaSense. In terms of comprehensiveness, AlphaSense appears to search many more document types that Senteo did not. Beyond this, AlphaSense's ability to search European filings was a large benefit to us given that we also look at European companies. Historically, I have found that a lot of providers can search USA filings due to high document standardization. However, searching in Europe is harder and was a key differentiator for me. Related to ease of use, the layout for AlphaSense was so much easier given that one screen is dedicated to word search, which has all of the filters and word research results together. Therefore, I chose AlphaSense over Senteo in my current role.
Do you think AlphaSense delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with AlphaSense's feature set?
Yes
Did AlphaSense live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of AlphaSense go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy AlphaSense again?
Yes
AlphaSense Feature Ratings
Evaluating AlphaSense and Competitors
Yes - Alphasense replaced Senteo which I had used previously. I decided to replace Senteo only because Alphasense seems to run better searches for international (i.e. EU) filings and to allow for more filtering in my searches. Based on my coverage area, it is a large help to be able to perform better searches on international (ex. USA) filings. As this is a regular part of my job, I decided that Alphasense would be a better fit. Also, given the large breadth of companies that I look at, I was drawn to the higher number of filters that I could use to narrow down companies to review. Senteo seem to have some filters but not near as much as Alphasense, which helped increase the efficiency of my searches.
- Ease of Use
The ease of use is especially important for my role, as an equity analyst. On a daily basis, I need to search quickly for either new companies to look at or to search efficiently for certain topical areas within a specific company's filings. Given the high volume of searches I do on a regular basis, even a little extra efficiency in use is important. Therefore, Alphasense's ease of use was especially important to me and help me decide to pick Alphasense.
If I had to evaluate different software products again, I would do the same search in each product to check the quality of the results and also how easy the product is to use. Doing this side-by-side would make for a more efficient selection process than just using one software at a time, as I did previously. Also too, I would set up alerts in each software product to see how many results the alert was pulling. Then, I could see which software product search was more comprehensive.