http://TheValueatRisk.blogspot.com
October
26,
2009
Focus
on
Operating
Efficiency:
Net
Operating
Profit
Margin
In a previous installment, I covered a measure of after-tax operating profitability known asNOPAT (Net Operating Profit After Taxes)
.
NOPAT serves as a relevant indicator of a firm'sability to operate efficiently, as it strips away many transitory, one-time items from the picture,focusing only on the firm's core business profitability. From an analytical perspective however,NOPAT may be more significant as a numerator of a ratio than as a stand alone measure. Oneof the most important such metrics is the Net Operating Profit Margin (NOPM).Calculating the Net Operating Profit Margin is very easy, assuming however that you canproperly calculate a firm's Net Operating Profit After Taxes.See this postif you need a refresheron NOPAT. Anyways, below is the formula:Net Operating Profit Margin = NOPAT / Sales RevenueHewlett-Packard (HPQ) FY 2008 NOPM CalculationNet Operating Profit Margin = NOPAT / Sales Revenue= $8591M / $118,364M= 7.26%To verbalize HP's NOPM of 7.26%, we would say that for every dollar of sales, HP was able togenerate 7.26 cents worth of after-tax operating profit. For many companies, operating profitmargin may be a more concise measure of performance than the commonly cited Gross ProfitMargin. Several small business owners I know are proud of what they perceive to be animpressive gross profit margin at their business. I usually dismiss such talk, as any fool can go