Merging with CRSP or Compustat

WRDS developed a research application that builds a link between IBES Ticker and CRSP PERMNO. This link is a header link and does not contain valid date ranges (like in the CCM product). However, it contains a score indicator which indicates the reliability of the match with 0 being the most accurate match. See more on this issue here (ICLINK product).

When it comes to linking IBES and Compustat, this task is complicated by the fact that Compustat does not carry historical CUSIPs, just header links. Compustat currently provides header IBES tickers in their Security Table (the variable IBTIC) (/wrds/comp/sasdata/na/security). It can be supplemented with other IBES tickers via ICLINK product which links CRSP and IBES, but you will need to have access to the CRSP-Compustat Merged database.