#financial-analysis
Analyze financial data and metrics to evaluate business performance and health
Contribution margin is sales revenue minus variable costs — the per-unit number that drives pricing, break-even analysis, and product-mix decisions. Learn the formula, how it differs from gross margin, common calculation mistakes, and typical ratios by industry (70–90% for software, 25–50% for manufacturing).
ROIC measures how efficiently a business turns debt and equity into after-tax operating profit — NOPAT divided by invested capital. Learn the formula, why it beats ROI and ROE, the WACC benchmark that separates value creators from value destroyers, and the five calculation mistakes owners make most.
The sustainable growth rate (SGR = retention rate × ROE) sets the maximum revenue growth a business can fund from its own profits without new debt or equity, with most healthy companies landing between 10% and 25% a year.
The times interest earned (TIE) ratio — EBIT divided by interest expense — tells lenders how many times over your operating earnings cover your interest bill. Most lenders want at least 2.5–3.0; below 1.5 signals high default risk. Here's how to calculate it, where it falls short, and how to improve it before a loan application.
Economic Value Added (EVA) = NOPAT − (WACC × invested capital) — the profit left after every source of capital, debt and equity alike, is paid its going rate. A worked example, how to estimate NOPAT and WACC, why EVA avoids ROI's percentage bias, and how small business owners can use it for capital decisions.
Alphabet's Q1 2026 revenue was $109.9B (+21.8% YoY) with Google Cloud accelerating to 63% growth and backlog above $460B, but the 82% jump in diluted EPS to $5.11 rests largely on a $37.7B other-income line — mostly unrealized marks on non-marketable equity securities. Backing out the $36.9B equity-securities gain leaves EPS near $2.76, roughly flat against last year's $2.81. Rebuilding the FY2022–Q1 2026 books in a public Beancount ledger shows exactly where the gain landed — non-marketable securities rose from $68.7B to $106.9B, not cash.
Amazon's FY2025: $716.9B net sales (+12.4%) and a record $77.7B net income (+31.1%) — but operating income grew only 16.6%, with a $15.2B non-operating equity gain accounting for $7.0B after tax. AWS grew 19.7% to $128.7B and produced 57% of company operating income on 18% of revenue, while PP&E jumped $104.4B in a single year. Modeled line by line in a public Beancount ledger.
Apple's Q2 FY2026 revenue reached $111.2 billion (+17% YoY) with expanding margins across every geographic segment, and a new $100 billion buyback authorization pushed retained earnings positive for the first time since fiscal 2021. Full income statement and balance sheet, FY2021-Q2 FY2026, in a public Beancount ledger.
Broadcom's FY2025: $63.9B revenue (+23.9%) and GAAP net income of $23.1B, up 292% from $5.9B — but decomposing the $17.2B swing shows revenue growth explains only 72% of it, with roughly $4.8B coming from a tax provision flipping to a $397M benefit plus one-time restructuring and discontinued-operations reversals. The durable signals are Infrastructure Software's operating margin rebounding to 76.8%, above its pre-VMware baseline, and AI semiconductor revenue guided to roughly double to $8.2B. Rebuilt line by line in a public Beancount ledger, FY2021–FY2025.
Circle's Q1 2026 revenue was $694.1M (+20% YoY) with USDC in circulation at $77.0B, but $405.4M — 58.4% — went to distribution partners, leaving an RLDC margin of 41%. Reserve income is 94% of revenue, so the top line tracks short-term interest rates. Rebuilding Circle's books in a public Beancount ledger also shows FY2025 was a net-loss year (−$70M), driven by a one-time $503.4M IPO compensation charge in Q2.
Micron's fiscal Q3 2026 revenue rose 345.7% to $41.46 billion while cost of goods sold rose only 10.5% to $6.40 billion, lifting GAAP gross margin from 37.7% to 84.6% and net income to $28.24 billion — a margin built on DRAM pricing, not cost structure, in a business that posted a negative 9.1% gross margin as recently as FY2023.
MiniMax's first annual report as a listed company shows FY2025 revenue of $79.0M (+158.9% YoY) and gross margin up to 25.4%, alongside an IFRS net loss of $1.87B — but $1.59B of that loss is a non-cash fair-value remeasurement of convertible redeemable preferred shares that converted to equity at the January 9, 2026 Hong Kong listing. Adjusted net loss grew only 2.7%, from $244.2M to $250.9M. A public Beancount ledger of FY2022–FY2025 shows exactly where the paper loss sits and why it disappears in FY2026.
