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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.