search_companies

Search for US public companies by name, ticker symbol, CIK (SEC identifier), or SIC industry code. Returns ticker, company name, sector, industry, exchange, and current S&P 500 membership status. Use this tool to resolve a company name to ticker/CIK before calling get_company_fundamentals, get_valuation_metrics, or other tools that require a ticker — they do not fuzzy-match company names.

**Use this tool — NOT get_pit_universe — when the user asks about CURRENT S&P 500 members.** To list current S&P 500 members, call search_companies({ is_sp500: true }) (the is_sp500 filter is itself a valid search parameter, so no other input is required). This returns the live snapshot as of query time. Example: "List 5 current S&P 500 members" → call search_companies({ is_sp500: true, limit: 5 }).

**Use get_pit_universe ONLY when the user explicitly needs a survivorship-free historical universe as of a specific past date** (e.g. "S&P 500 members as of March 2018"). If the user says "current," "today," "now," or gives no date, use search_companies instead.

**One ticker can return two rows.** A CIK identifies a *registrant*, not a company, so a reincorporation or holdco reorganisation moves the ticker to a NEW CIK while the filing history stays under the old one. Both rows are real. Use is_active to tell them apart: true is the current listing, false is the superseded one and carries listed_until. Prefer is_active over status — status is an entity-level flag that is unreliable in both directions.

**Data details:** sic_code is the 4-digit SIC; industry is the human-readable label. sector is SIC-derived with GICS-style labels — NOT licensed GICS, so industrial conglomerates may map differently from official GICS (e.g. 3M → 'Health Care' by SIC vs Industrials by GICS). S&P 500 membership is sourced from index_membership.parquet (current SP500 = index_name='SP500' AND removal_date IS NULL). Available on all plans.

**CIK is the canonical, stable identifier — prefer it for backtests and archival work.** A ticker can be retired and later RECYCLED to an unrelated company (DEC is now Diversified Energy, AMR is Alpha Metallurgical, ARC is a document company today), so a ticker-only reference can silently drift to the wrong issuer years later. A purely-numeric query (or the dedicated cik param) resolves by CIK. Every company-scoped tool (get_company_fundamentals, get_financial_ratios, get_stock_price, etc.) accepts the cik this tool returns in place of ticker — carry it forward across a multi-step workflow instead of re-resolving by ticker each call. include_inactive defaults to true: this is a survivorship-free product, so delisted/superseded listings are never hidden by default.