Yes, its not just sales, its cash-flow .... in the end that reads out on the revs line and the PL line.
looking at dRev and dExp in percentages QtoQ one observes:
qtr dRev% dExp% dRev-dExp
Q2-09 21% -8% 28.96%
Q3-09 -5% 3% -8.65%
Q4-09 1% 14% -12.93% **
Q1-10 16% 6% 9.98%
Q2-10 9% 11% -1.60%
Q3-10 4% 6% -2.15%
Q4-10 5% 5% 0.28%
Q1-11 6% 15% -9.39% **
Q2-11 8% 4% 3.50%
Q3-11 15% 11% 4.34%
q4-11 12% 28% -15.49% **
Obviously Q1-11 (**) and Q4-11 (**) stand out as the big expense pulses that in some way could be argued to have obliterated the otherwise improving outlook with the recognition that Q4-09 (**) was presumably all about nailing GM with some authority. The last column (dRev-DExp) needs to be a positive value for the lines to intersect and profitability to follow.
Obviously (again), these numbers may be improved upon by breaking out SGA and RD, but I really don't know how representative those values actually are.
A better way would probably be to do moving averages on these values to get a better feeling for what is going on. It is still rather obviously a rather volatile, punctate of you will, data set.
edit, so while the general impression of exp outpacing revs holds, it is a consequence of rather discrete events, the broader trend is IMO more encouraging. If one removes the first and last quarter from the data set above and has software impose a trendline on dRev-dExp it is clearly a positive slope.
and now it is time to put the abacus back in the smoker.
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