Acerca da importância do lucro

Quase todos os dias vejo gente a cometer o erro de confundir lucro com volume de vendas.

O que é o lucro?

"There is only one true definition of profit. Profit is what the owner of a company can keep after the company has fulfilled all obligations towards employees, suppliers, banks and the state. All other profit definitions, such as EBIT, EBITDA and extensions are not profit."

O que é o lucro económico?

"Economic profit is a more demanding benchmark. It’s the profit that exceeds the cost of capital, the so-called weighted average cost of capital. You could say that only economic profit is real entrepreneurial profit. Because if you don’t exceed your costs of capital, you better invest your capital elsewhere and not in your company."

O coronavirus veio ilustrar como o lucro é importante:

"The Corona-crisis brings the hour of truth, and it’s exactly now. Companies which weren’t profitable in the past and have no reserves are the first to fail. After the crisis, profit will become more important than ever because making profit will be critical for recovery, for instance, to pay back incurred debt. That will be the second hour of truth." [Moi ici: Não esquecer um texto pré-crise de 2010 sobre os que não têm constância de propósito. Agora, os mesmos muito preocupados com a sobrevivência das empresas, são os mesmos que em Novembro último estavam de peito feito.]

Lucro, a realidade versus a voz populismo:

"In Germany people believe that the net profit margin, after all costs and all taxes, is 23%. The real margin over many years is 3.4%. Similar in the US. The believe is 32% net profit margin, the reality is 4.9%. The record holders are the Italians. They think that the margin is 38%, the reality is 5%. There are two messages: Real net margins are 5% or less, typically. Furthermore, people overestimate profit margins by 600%. That’s unbelievable."

O que costuma estar por trás de baixas taxas de lucro?

"The main reason are wrong goals: market share, revenue, sales orientation instead of profit orientation. This is exacerbated by conflicting goals between functions, for instance, between finance and marketing." [Moi ici: Estão a ver como posso ficar doente quando vejo ideias estúpidas pulularem sem contraditório?]

O que dizer de lucro e dimensão das empresas?

"large corporations are not more profitable. The median of the net margin of the Fortune Global 500 is 4.49%. This tells us that half of these giants earn less than 4.5%. Most likely they don’t make an economic profit, meaning that they don’t recover their cost of capital. That’s the case for half of the Fortune Global 500. The public perception is misguided by a few profit stars.
...
profit always depends on the combination of three profit drivers and there are only those three: price, volume and cost." 

Trechos retirados de "REIMAGINE THE FUTURE: „Hidden Champions”, Profit, Krise und Zukunft"