Tear Sheets
Categories: Banking
A “tear sheet” is like a résumé for a business. It’s a one-page fact sheet containing everything we’d ever want to know about a company’s financials: its market cap, market price, 52-week high and low prices, workforce size, revenue, historical performance…all kinds of stuff. Back in the day, S&P used to put out big binders full of tear sheets, and brokers would tear one out—hence the name—to give to interested shareholders. But now all this info is available online, so no need to print it out and stick it in binders anymore.
The term “tear sheet” is also used in marketing, although depending on whom we’re talking to, the definition might be a little different. In one setting, a “tear sheet” might refer to a piece of direct mail marketing designed to look like a one-page magazine ad. In other words, all those glossy, one-page ads we get in the mailbox and transfer directly to the recycling bin? Those are tear sheets.
It can also refer to the practice of actually, physically tearing an ad out of a magazine or newspaper, sticking it in an envelope, and sending it to someone else as proof the ad was run. That was kind of a pre-internet thing to do, but it was a good way to verify that advertising had taken place.
