History of Derivatives
Derivatives may have found their way into the media in very recent times. However, they have been used by mankind for a very long time. Since the inception of time, humans have not liked the idea of uncertainty. More so, they did not like the idea of economic uncertainty. Hence, the need to offset this […]
The Green Shoe Option in Investment Banking
In many cases, IPOs are thought of as being underpriced. This means that as soon as the IPO is listed in the market, investor demand appears, and as a result, the price of the newly listed shares goes up. This is the situation that the issuing company, as well as the investment banker, wants to […]
The True Cost of Raising Funds
A startup is considered to be successful when it is able to raise money. The fact that a startup was able to convince potential investors to open their wallets is considered to be proof that the business model is stable. The fundraising aspect can be considered to be quite thrilling and even glamorous. However, it […]
Behavioral Life Cycle Theory
There have been many economic theories developed in order to understand how and why human beings save and spend their resources. Up until now, most of these theories have been developed based on the principles of theoretical finance. The first theory to be put up in this regard was developed by Modigliani in the year […]
Decentralized Crypto Exchanges
Cryptocurrencies are just like other financial assets. This means that they can also be bought and sold in financial markets. However, since they cannot be listed on regular financial markets, special markets have been created for trading them. These markets can be of two types viz. centralized and decentralized. In the previous article, we have […]
The ultimate aim of all business is to generate profit. That is what the investors invest for, management plans for and employees execute for.
Two companies may be generating the exact same amount of rupee profits, however that does not mean that they are equally profitable. This is because profit is an output measure. And jumping to a conclusion only by looking at the output and not the input that was used to generate the output would not be very prudent!
The profit numbers are therefore seen in relation to various measures of inputs like capital, equity, assets etc. Each of these measures tell a separate story about how the company is performing specific to the input. Analysts often use these numbers together, connect the dots and find out the true picture of the company’s profitability.
Shareholders want the business to generate as much profit as possible. Debt holders on the other hand are content with enough money to ensure that they get paid. Banks want to know whether the company has been making efficient use of fixed assets before granting a loan to buy another one. Thus different user groups have different needs. Hence there is a need for a wide variety of profitability ratios that serves them.
A careful analysis of the profitability ratios also unearths the drivers of profitability. Analysts can look at the financial ratios of an extended period of time and use correlation analysis to unearth the same. The ability to express the company’s business as an accurate input output model is vital for analysts. This is because they can then guess the input, obtain the output and value the firm based on this information.
Common drivers of profitability include economies of scale, economies of scope, mechanization, automation, investment in brand value etc.
Industries have their specific business cycles. These business cycles have similar duration and the highs and lows that the business will experience can also be gauged fairly accurately. Profitability ratios help in doing the same.
Analysts use ratios from past several years and then conduct a trend analysis to find out the patterns hidden in the data. This helps them find out how the sales are expected to move in the next quarter.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
