Quotes About Profitability

The idea that growth equals profitability is a misconception. If you can't afford the financial or qualitative side of growth, it can just as easily put you out of business.

Busyness does not make you money, business do. Are you running a busyness or a business?

All organizations must be capable of change. We need concepts and measurements that give to other kinds of organizations what the market test and profitability yardstick give to business. Those tests and yardsticks will be quite different.

The p/e ratio can be thought of as the number of years it will take the company to earn back the amount of your initial investment—assuming, of course, that the company's earnings stay constant.

The real ethical issue about factory farming's treatment of animals isn't whether the producers are good or bad guys, but that the system seems to recognize animal suffering only when it interferes with profitability.

A well-built brand is the culmination of intangibles that do not directly flow to the revenue or profitability of a company, but contribute to its texture. Forsaking them can take a subtle, collective toll.

Just selling through a movie theater is not ever going to be a viable way to make money back on a movie anymore.

Porter defines the value proposition as the answer to three fundamental questions (see figure 4-1): Which customers are you going to serve? Which needs are you going to meet? What relative price will provide acceptable value for customers and acceptable profitability for the company?

Memorizing the five forces won't make you a better business thinker; it will only help you to sound like one. It matters that you grasp the deeper point: there are a limited number of structural forces at work in every industry that systematically impact profitability in a predictable direction.

matters that you grasp the deeper point: there are a limited number of structural forces at work in every industry that systematically impact profitability in a predictable direction.

Why is current industry profitability what it is? What's propping it up? What's changing? How is profitability likely to shift? What limiting factors must be overcome to capture more of the value you create?

We should not prioritize on the basis of project profitability, but rather on how this profitability is affected by delay.

So you like seeing a high EPS with a low P/E. Yes. That's the best combination. I am sure there is a way of combining the two on a computer and coming up with a very good system.

Success and profitability are outcomes of focusing on customers and employees, not objectives.

Excellence always sells.

If your goal is anything but profitability - if it's to be big, or to grow fast, or to become a technology leader - you'll hit problems.

My goal in coming to General Motors was to help restore profitability, build a strong market position and position this iconic company for success. We are clearly on that path.

Competitive forces = the underlying drivers of profitability P.25

Programs in operational effectiveness produce reassuring progress, although superior profitability may remain elusive. Business publications and consultants flood the market with information about what other companies are doing, reinforcing the best-practice mentality. Caught up in the race for operational effectiveness, many managers simply do not understand the need to have a strategy. Companies

Good industry analysis looks rigorously at the structural underpinnings of profitability P.29

The point of industry analysis is not to declare the industry attractive or unattractive but to understand the underpinnings of competition and the root causes of profitability. P.29

Complements can be important when they affect the overall demand for an industry's product. However, like government policy, complements are not a sixth force determining industry profitability since the presence of strong complements is not necessarily bad (or good) for industry profitability. Complements affect profitability through the way they influence the five forces.

It is the "threat of entry", not whether "entry" actually occurs, that holds down profitability. p.26

Rivalry is especially destructive to profitability if it gravitates solely to price because price competition transfers profits directly from an industry to its customers. P.32