SEC EDGAR · Pharma Licensing Deals Scraper

Export licensing, collaboration, and M&A exhibits for pharma / biotech companies from the U.S. SEC EDGAR archive — company, partner, deal type, dates, financial hints, and direct document links.

No login. No API key. No EDGAR account.

Who is this for?

You are…	Typical goal	Suggested setup
Biotech BD / competitive intel	Track peer licensing and collabs	Paste tickers · 8-K + 10-K
Equity / sell-side research	Deal appendix with SEC sources	Your tickers · dateFrom last 5–10y
Academic / student project	Public deal corpus	Paste a universe · Excel/CSV export
Data / ops	Recurring universe refresh	Same company list on a Schedule
Partnering / outbound teams	Who signed with whom	Research export view + document URLs

What you get by default — one row per filtered deal exhibit: company identity, partner, deal type, signing/announcement dates, financial hints when disclosed, territory flags when stated, SEC document URL.

Honest coverage — only SEC registrants appear. Some foreign ADR / Level-I issuers resolve on EDGAR but have no licensing exhibit stream (F-6 / ownership only). Financial terms are often redacted ([***]).

Quick start

1. Open the Actor in Apify Console.
2. Paste tickers in Companies (e.g. PFE, BMY, ZLAB).
3. Optionally set a date window and Max deal rows for a first test.
4. Click Start → open the Overview dataset view → Export Excel/CSV.

Ready-made examples (published tasks)

Example	Best for
Top US big pharma smoke test	First run / QA
China / Asia ADRs in the list	Asia focus
Single ticker deep history	One-company research
Research export columns	Spreadsheet handoff

(Publish the four tasks in Console to activate Store Examples URLs.)

What it extracts

Category	Fields
Company	company_name, ticker, cik, country, former_names
Deal identity	deal_id, deal_family_id, deal_type, is_amendment, partner
Dates	signing_date, effective_date, closing_date, announcement_date (≈ filing date), filing_date
Economics	upfront, milestones, royalties, total_deal_value, currency, financials_redacted
Rights	exclusive, co_commercialization, option_to_license, worldwide_rights, china_rights, us_rights, eu_rights, japan_rights
Science hints	asset_hint, therapeutic_area, clinical_phase, modality (sparse — often absent from exhibits)
Source	filing_form, exhibit_type, exhibit_title, document_url, index_url, source

Important / limitations

• Only SEC registrants appear (U.S. filers and foreign issuers via 20-F / 6-K / ADRs). Pure home-market listings with no EDGAR footprint are skipped or return zero deals.
• Manual CIK map for common OTC ADRs (Roche→Genentech, Daiichi, Bayer, etc.) and keeps Merck Group (KGaA) ≠ Merck & Co.
• Dollar amounts are frequently redacted under confidential treatment.
• Product / phase / modality fields are best-effort and often empty — exhibit titles rarely carry full scientific detail.
• Employment, lease, credit-facility and stock-plan exhibits are filtered when deal-keyword filtering is ON.
• Respect SEC fair-access rules (identify with a User-Agent email; ~10 requests/second). The Actor throttles automatically.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Notes
companies	string[]	—	Required. Tickers or Name|TICKER|Country
forms	string[]	8-K, 10-K, 10-Q, 20-F, 6-K, …	Filing types to open
dateFrom / dateTo	date	—	YYYY-MM-DD
maxFilingsPerCompany	integer	120	Newest first; 0 = all
maxDeals	integer	0	Row ceiling; 0 = no cap
requireDealKeywords	boolean	false	ON = stricter license/collab/M&A titles only
peekExhibitTitles	boolean	true	Read document head when title thin
harvestExhibitIndex	boolean	true	Item 15 exhibit list
resolveIncorporated	boolean	true	Follow incorporated-by-reference
dedupeMode	string	keep_base_and_latest	Amendment grouping
extractFields	boolean	true	Partner / dates / financials / rights
asiaRelatedOnly	boolean	false	Keep Asia-flagged rows only

API-only (omit from Console — pass via JSON / API):

Field	Default	Notes
writeLocalCsv	true locally	Write output.csv outside cloud
useDefaultCompanies	false	Opt-in curated ~35 list when companies empty (API only)
maxCompanies	0	Cap company count (0 = all) — API only
writeFilingsInventory	true locally	Progressive archive/filings.csv
downloadDealDocuments	true locally	Save exhibits under archive/documents/{TICKER}/
appendArchive / archiveDir	—	Catch-up / custom archive folder
llmApiKey / llmModel / llmBaseUrl	—	Optional OpenAI-compatible field refinement
userAgent	built-in	Override SEC contact User-Agent
verboseLogs	false	Extra debug lines
proxyConfiguration	Apify proxy on cloud	Rarely needed for EDGAR

Example input

{
  "useDefaultCompanies": false,
  "companies": ["PFE", "BMY", "ZLAB"],
  "dateFrom": "2020-01-01",
  "maxFilingsPerCompany": 80,
  "requireDealKeywords": true,
  "peekExhibitTitles": true,
  "extractFields": true
}

How it works

1. Load the SEC company ticker directory (+ manual CIK map for OTC ADRs).
2. Resolve each input company to a CIK.
3. Download the registrant’s submissions history (including paginated archives).
4. Optionally harvest 10-K Item 15 and resolve incorporated-by-reference exhibits.
5. Scan filing indexes for EX-10 / EX-2 / EX-99 deal-like exhibits.
6. Deduplicate amendment chains; extract structured fields heuristically.
7. Push one dataset row per kept deal (+ optional local archive).

Output sample

{
  "deal_id": "0000078003-0000078003-24-000123-EX-10.1-3",
  "company_name": "PFIZER INC",
  "ticker": "PFE",
  "cik": "0000078003",
  "partner": "BioNTech SE",
  "deal_type": "collaboration",
  "signing_date": "2020-03-17",
  "announcement_date": "2020-03-20",
  "filing_form": "8-K",
  "filing_date": "2020-03-20",
  "exhibit_type": "EX-10.1",
  "exhibit_title": "Collaboration Agreement",
  "document_url": "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/78003/…/ex101.htm",
  "financials_redacted": true,
  "asia_related": false,
  "match_reason": "keyword_match"
}

How much does it cost to scrape SEC EDGAR deals?

Pay-per-event (PPE) — HTTP-only, no residential proxy required. List prices (FREE tier):

Event	FREE	Bronze	Silver	Gold	Platinum / Diamond
Actor start	Free	Free	Free	Free	Free
Deal exhibit row	$0.02	$0.018	$0.015	$0.012	$0.01

Scenario	Deals	FREE tier total (rows only)
Smoke test (2–3 companies)	~30	~$0.60
Mid run (10 companies)	~150	~$3.00
Full custom list (~35 tickers)	~500	~$10.00
1,000 deal rows	1,000	~$20.00

Apify platform compute is separate and usually small on this Actor (no browser). Full-history runs on large filers can take longer — use dateFrom / maxFilingsPerCompany for cheaper tests.

Is it legal to scrape SEC EDGAR?

This Actor only accesses data the SEC makes publicly available under its fair-access policy (identify yourself with a User-Agent; stay under the published rate guidance). As with any dataset that may include personal names inside contracts, ensure your use complies with applicable law (including GDPR where relevant).

Local development

cd sec-edgar-licensing-deals-scraper
npm install
npm test
apify run --input-file=./input.json

• Default KV input: .actor/INPUT.json (Console Try mirror).
• Repo input.json merges when not on cloud (KV/CLI overrides).
• Results: storage/datasets/default/, local output.csv, optional archive/ (filings + deals + documents).

Support

Contact corentin@outreacher.fr if you need a custom SEC pipeline (deeper field extraction, schedules, private universes).

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