Glossary

The top line. Growth here means nothing until you check what survived to the bottom.

The pieces have to multiply back to the reported number, which is what stops you telling yourself a story. Half an hour with the volume tables and the business combinations note builds one.

What an airline actually sold, against the capacity (ASK) it offered.

The closest thing a services business has to a productivity measure.

Shows how productively space is used. New formats and new cities often dilute it at first.

Two shops book ₹1 lakh. One took cash from four hundred walk-ins; the other gave ninety days’ credit to two buyers who can return the goods.

Recognising early pulls tomorrow’s revenue into today. Watch unbilled revenue growing faster than billed.

Rises with complex specialties, cash and insured patients, and shorter stays; government-scheme patients usually lower it.

Revenue is roughly subscribers × ARPU. Because network costs are fixed, rising ARPU flows mostly to profit.

The plain-language description that has to come before any ratio. If you can only repeat the company’s own marketing sentence, you do not have one yet.

Often a large share of an Indian hotel’s revenue, and seasonal because of weddings.

Load factor, fares and extras rolled into one number, to be set against the cost per seat-kilometre.

The headline hotel measure, combining how full a hotel is with what each occupied room pays.

Watch the share of revenue against the share of units. When those two move apart, mix is doing the work rather than volume or price.

Highest on equity funds and lowest on liquid and index funds, so the mix decides it.

The licence fee is 8% of it. A 2019 Supreme Court ruling on its definition created large past dues for several operators.

A few extra rupees per passenger that matter a great deal when the margin per seat is only paise.

It makes earnings predictable, which is most of why the market pays more for it. Establish what share of the top line genuinely recurs before applying the label to the whole company.

Growing faster than revenue means either work is running ahead of the billing milestones, which reverses, or measurements are not being certified, which does not.

The reason profit is an opinion and cash is a fact. Dozens of timing judgements sit between a sale being booked and money reaching the bank.

It collapses during a capex cycle because capital arrives before revenue does.

Falling ADS while the chain opens many stores can mean new outlets are cannibalising old ones.

A hotel’s pricing power. Rate increases fall almost entirely to profit.

The price reacts to the gap between reality and expectation, so a record quarter can fall hard. Check what produced the beat too: a lower tax rate is not operational performance and will not repeat.

Only meaningful if both halves describe the same work. A backlog containing unawarded bids, divided by revenue containing short-cycle sales, is unreliable in both directions.

Return on capital multiplied by retention is how fast a company can grow without diluting you. Capital-light businesses compound faster because growth does not consume the profit.

Useful as a benchmark for what is already priced in, not as a forecast. Being right with the consensus pays nothing.

Matters not because it is accurate but because it is what the price already reflects. Good results below consensus still fall.

The honest growth number for Indian IT services. A weak rupee flatters reported revenue without a single extra hour having been billed.

The part of every extra rupee of sales that is actually left over to pay the rent.

Indian rules require disclosure above 10% of revenue. It caps margins as well as threatening revenue.

Rising while revenue is flat compresses margin directly, and it is visible early.

A processing fee integral to the loan’s yield is folded into the effective interest rate and spread over the loan’s life; commission and service charges are earned at origination. Fee income growing much faster than the book means more of the return is being taken up front.

The stretch where reported numbers look worst and screens mark the company down.

Its stability through a cost cycle says more than its level in calm conditions.

It replaced the separate older standards for construction contracts and revenue. Its central question is whether the customer obtains control over time or at a point in time, which decides when revenue exists at all.

Growth that was bought rather than grown, at a price the revenue line never mentions. A mid-year acquisition flatters two consecutive years, and then stops.

The case where "it is a joint venture, so the debt is off the balance sheet" is simply wrong. Unincorporated arrangements such as jointly held oil and gas exploration blocks commonly fall here.

Growth means little without it. Growing 18% while the industry grows 22% is losing ground.

An exporter who also imports most inputs has far less net exposure than its revenue suggests.

The cinema versus the caterer. High fixed costs mean a 10% sales rise can be a 40% profit rise — and a 10% fall can be a warning.

How much of each rupee of sales survives the cost of actually running the business.

The like-for-like number. A company reporting 18% having bought a third of the increase did not grow 18%.

Where scheme receipts, scrap sales and export incentives usually land. Because it is inside revenue it is also inside EBITDA, which is how an operating margin improves without the manufacturing improving.

The airline’s pricing, stripped of how far people flew. Falling yield with rising traffic often means a fare war.

Revenue growth ≈ volume + price + mix. Growth that is mostly price-mix stops when inflation stops.

Every revenue claim is really two claims: how many were sold, and at what price. The two can move in opposite directions and still produce a flattering headline.

For cement this is the number that moves profit, and it is regional rather than national — north and south India can sit in opposite pricing cycles at the same time.

Rising receivable days alongside rising revenue is one of the most reliable warnings available.

The commission sets a return rather than a price, so the analysis moves to the allowance and the disallowances. Regulatory lag is where the margin actually goes: between an input cost rising and a tariff order recognising it, the company funds the gap itself.

Separates a network that is expanding from one that is performing. Total growth of 21% alongside same-store growth of 2% means the growth was bought with capital expenditure.

Consolidated numbers average a great business with a poor one. This note separates them.

Rising means the platform is being paid more for what it does. Falling usually means volume is being bought with discounts, which appears in the accounts as growth.

A stall selling samosas at ₹10 that cost ₹11 loses more the more it sells. If the unit does not work, scale is the problem rather than the solution.

The FMCG number that shows whether brands are winning. Revenue can rise on price alone while the company sells no more than last year.

Compound implied revenue forward. If the company ends up larger than its market, the assumption answered itself.

Approval lets you compete on price with every other approved maker. The pipeline of pending ANDAs is a generic company’s future revenue.

It shows in employee cost before margin, and in margin before revenue.

The denominator for every airline unit measure — revenue and cost are both quoted per seat-kilometre.

Shorter stays lower occupancy but raise revenue per bed-day and free beds — often a sign of efficiency.

Revenue minus this is gross profit, the purest read on pricing power. Rising faster than revenue means input costs are not being passed on.

The commonest method in Indian contracting, and the one with a forecast in the denominator. Revenue to date is the contract price times that fraction.

Revenue leaves and so do the borrowings, which reads as deleveraging with no repayment. It also happens when a subsidiary enters insolvency and a resolution professional displaces its board.

One post-tax line of profit and one line of carrying amount. No revenue, no assets, no borrowings and no interest cost from the investee reach your accounts at all.

The figure that actually constrains next year’s revenue, and the one least likely to be in the headline. A total backlog can grow while this shrinks.

Usually a base fee on revenue plus an incentive fee on operating profit — little capital, high returns, less profit per room.

The accounting sense is narrower than the everyday one. It is the classification that puts a whole business, its revenue and its borrowings behind a single line of profit in your accounts.

Only meaningful next to CAC. Below one, the company is buying revenue rather than earning it.

Often 25 years for renewables. It makes revenue predictable enough to borrow against; power sold without one goes to the exchanges at volatile prices.

Growing much faster than revenue is one of the earliest and most reliable warning signs.

It manufactures revenue that never becomes cash. Where it surfaces is the related-party note and large receivables from group companies that persist year after year.

Not this quarter’s revenue. A seven-year deal is earned over seven years, and part of a big TCV is often a renewal of work the company already had.

The single most powerful number in a contractor’s accounts. Revise it downward and this period’s revenue and margin rise without a rupee of extra work being done.

An exchange’s largest revenue line, and a cost that appears on every contract note.

It ended slab-based rebates that some brokers had kept as income, cutting their revenue.

It enters revenue only to the extent that a significant later reversal is highly improbable. Which is why a large and genuine claim against a government client can be entirely absent from the profit line.

Booked as revenue, but not the same as customers buying. Compare with retail registrations to see stock building at dealers.