Besides getting GE out of the riskier bits of finance, Mr Immelt is pushing it further into sophisticated, high-margin capital goods such as jet engines, gas turbines for power generation and equipment for fracking rigs.
Our research indicates that companies that make their customers partners, and share the value created, lead the pack on revenue growth, profit margins, capital efficiency, and enterprise value.
Although sales forecasting primarily has used forecasting techniques, these techniques will be applied increasingly to forecasting margins, capital expenditure, and other important factors.
To that end, they may model out the intrinsic value of a stock based on projected revenue growth, margins, capital structure, hard assets, etc.
We pay attention to growth rates, growth in employee numbers, how long companies have been doing what it is they do, operating margins, capital raised, product ideas, management and other factors.
Using PRI or other guides, bank training programs for newly minted college and business school graduates could teach how ESG factors affect company valuations via the levers of revenues, operating margins, capital spending, asset values, and risk; as well as how sustainability issues affect fixed income prices.
Recycling is a high-minded although notoriously low-margin, capital-intensive, volume-based industry, dependent on increasing public participation.
It too takes a cradle-to-grave approach: the firm's oil business, for instance, includes everything from exploration to petrol stations.Such integration may improve trading margins, but only by getting the commodities firms into lots of low-margin, capital-intensive businesses like shipping and mining.
The downstream refining business traditionally is a low-margin, capital-intensive commodity business.
Companies like Mattel have pursued a deliberate strategy in recent years: Get out of the low-margin, capital-intensive business of manufacturing goods and focus on the higher-margin business of branding and marketing.
