Advisors looking for independent, in-depth analysis on Canadian-listed small-cap stocks in the oil- and-gas and mining sectors will now have a fresh resource.

The new Web site, www.StockresearchDD.com — the DD is short for “due diligence” — applies the discipline of chartered business valuation to more than 340 names in those sectors. It also bears the stamp of its owner, Ian Campbell — a Bay Street veteran and founder of Campbell Valuation Partners Ltd. of Toronto.

“I’ve applied due diligence to the Web site in the same way I’ve run my consulting practice — with the most care I could possibly give it,” says Campbell, whose company has operated behind the scenes on hundreds of equity deals since it was founded in 1976.

Campbell has a natural interest in due diligence on companies as a founding member of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Business Valuators in 1971. He claims he’s not an expert on small-cap stocks, but since edging into semi-retirement more than four years ago, he has developed his own approach to investing in the arena. “I’m someone who reads a lot and reaches conclusions,” he says.

Now, more than a year after his decision to set up the Web site, and after plenty of tinkering, the site was set to launch on Dec. 3. Campbell says it includes at least a half-dozen elements and approaches that he has seen nowhere else, including a research/due diligence Q&A on each of the companies that are profiled on the site.

More than 1,700 names in the small-cap arena are listed on either the Toronto Stock Exchange or the TSX Venture Exchange, but Campbell’s site screens out more than 1,300 of them with basic balance-sheet information and market capitalization limits.

“The ratios I selected ought to ensure there is sufficient cash on hand and balance-sheet strength to sustain the company,” Campbell says, “without the company needing to issue incremental equity in the near term.”

For example, the site includes only mining exploration and production companies with market capitalizations ranging from $50 million to $1.5 billion and more than $2.5 million in free cash, among other criteria. Oil-and-gas companies have a market-cap minimum of $125 million and a debt-to-equity ratio of less than 50%.

That is not to say the site makes “buy” or “sell” recommendations, Campbell says, or that the companies excluded from the site would not make interesting investments.

StockresearchDD.com is partly an aggregator of licensed, third-party data and newswire feeds that aren’t put together anywhere else, including that from Capital IQ, the institutional data feed that is part of Standard & Poor’s Corp.; Canada NewsWire, from CNW Group Ltd.; and Marketwire Inc.

Campbell’s Web site also posts insider-trading information collected from the Canadian Securities Administrators. And there is the usual assortment of stock price and volatility graphs via feeds from New York-based Ticker Technologies Inc.

The StockresearchDD.com site is organized in three ways: it offers long-view economic data, including third-party, country-specific reports; it takes a closer look at each industry, providing a 54-page report from Campbell on valuation methodology for each of the industries, as well as sources for third-party reports and analysis; and members can then analyse company data and news from the various licensed data and information feeds.

It is at the company level that Web site members will find quarterly financials, insider trading information and details about director and management ownership. About 80% of this Web site’s uniqueness is in its company research, says Khaled Sultan, president of Stock Research Due Diligence Inc. , the Toronto-based company that Campbell formed to run the Web site.

Advisors will recognize some of the data and information from other sources, including that from sell-side analysis at the big U.S. and Canadian brokerages. For independent advisors, some of the data and reports are available for a fee from Canadian Web sites, such as www.finance.yahoo.ca or www.globeinves-tor.com. To the extent that small-cap companies are dually listed in Canada and the U.S., Morningstar Inc. , the Chicago-based company offers some Canadian small-cap research (www.morning-star.com) for a fee, as do a handful of other U.S.-based Web sites. Subscription fees are common.

Some independent small-cap research is available free of charge, for example from Calgary-based Jennings Capital Inc. (www.jenningscapital.com or Toronto-based Paradigm Capital Inc. (www.paradigmcapital.com).

@page_break@And, of course, every company files its financials in public documents to the Canadian Securities Administrators, which posts them for free at www.sedar.com, the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval. But that is generally a mass of information that is labour-intensive to sort through.

StockresearchDD.com’s best value is probably its due diligence questionnaire, which asks and answers questions on each company to help investors quantify their risks in what are generally high-risk but high-reward investments. A typical questionnaire covers 185 to 212 questions on each company.

“If the questionnaire was useful in my practice, why wouldn’t it be useful for public-company research and due diligence?” asks Campbell. “I spent hundreds of hours developing the questionnaire to what it now is.”

A U.S. patent is pending on the due diligence questionnaire. The Web site company developed a word search algorithm to help answer questions about each company and to keep the Q&A up to date. The site displays questions and answers in context, culled from the thousands of pages of documents filed publicly for each company.

The idea, Sultan says, is that if certain questions are not answered, an advisor or investor could approach either the company’s investor relations team or company management at shareholder meetings and ask why.

“Are employees in the company terminable at will and without liability? That’s not being addressed in the documents. Why not?” asks Sultan. “Let’s say there are questions about management that have not been addressed. Why not?”

The Web site was developed for financial advisors and sophisticated, do-it-yourself investors with more than $100,000 invested in equity markets. Says Sultan: “Anyone else would drown in the information.”

Although the data feeds are automated, part of the research is manual. Along with Sultan, a back office of six interns from Wilfrid Laurier University help populate the site’s data fields under the oversight of a chartered financial analyst and an accountant who works with the firm. The researchers find the information listed in public documents on SEDAR.

“We get all of the information we can get, and present it in a systematic way,” Sultan says, “so that all companies can be compared in exactly the same way.”

“We believe once you do the research and do your due diligence,” he adds, “you will grasp the risk factors of investing in the sectors.”

Campbell has invested his own money in the company, and he plans to keep it well capitalized until it becomes self-sufficient.

StockresearchDD.com offers a one-month trial for less than $10; membership costs $19.95 a month thereafter. Advisors who are interested in the service can view a site demo and see the company’s research on one firm, Vancouver-based exploration firm Fronteer Development Group Inc. IE