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Every company in the FocusAlpha registry has one canonical ID of the form cmp_…. Everything else — tickers, CIKs, ISINs, local market codes — is an identifier attached to that company. Most routes accept any of them; one route insists on the canonical ID. This page gives you the exact rules.

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The canonical cmp_ ID

The registry spans roughly 25,000 listed companies across 82 countries. A company’s cmp_ ID is stable: tickers change, companies re-list, ISINs get reassigned, but the cmp_ ID keeps pointing at the same company. You get it from any registry search:
Each row in data carries the company’s cmp_ ID alongside its identifiers.

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What each route accepts

The four registry routes are strict. GET /v1/companies/:company_id and its siblings /identifiers, /listings, and /events require a literal cmp_ ID in the path — a ticker there returns 404:
Every other /v1/companies/:company_id/... dataset route is flexible. Market data, short interest, news, events, guidance, executive compensation, the Taiwan and Korea datasets, disclosures, 20-F — all of them resolve the path segment as a ticker, CIK, ISIN, or cmp_ ID, whichever you pass:
An identifier that cannot be resolved returns a 404 whose message names the accepted forms — so a failed lookup tells you what to try next rather than leaving you guessing.
For scripts and integrations, resolve once and use the cmp_ ID everywhere. Ticker resolution is convenient interactively, but tickers are reused and reassigned over time; the canonical ID is the only spelling that cannot drift under you.

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Non-US symbols carry a market suffix

Outside the US, a bare local code is ambiguous — Taiwan’s 6976 and Japan’s 6976 are different companies. Pass the suffixed symbol:

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Listing every identifier

GET /v1/companies/:company_id/identifiers returns every identifier the registry holds for a company — useful when you arrive with one identifier system and need another:
Identifier types include CIK, TICKER, ISIN, and market-specific systems such as TW_UBN (Taiwan unified business number) and DART_CORP (Korea DART corporation code), among others. Sibling routes complete the picture:
  • GET /v1/companies/:company_id/listings — every exchange listing
  • GET /v1/companies/:company_id/events — splits and name changes (partial history)

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One company, many tickers

A company can trade under several symbols — dual listings, share classes, ADRs. The guidance and earnings routes (/guidance*, /earnings-results) deliberately resolve your identifier to every ticker the company is known by, not just its primary listing, so data filed under a secondary symbol still shows up. You do not need to enumerate a company’s tickers yourself before querying those datasets.

Coverage and freshness

What the registry covers, and how to read the coverage object on responses.

Errors

What a 404 from an unresolvable identifier looks like.