profitability

UK/ˌpɹɒf.ɪ.təˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/US/ˌpɹɑ.fɪ.təˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/

nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,113 of 15,258mostly written

Profitability is how much money a business is able to make. Improve profitability, low profitability, the profitability of the branch.

It is not the same as turnover, which is what comes in, and a business can grow its sales for years while profitability falls. It is usually quoted as a margin, meaning profit as a share of revenue.

Definitions of profitability

1nounprofitabilityHow much money a business is able to make.C2
“The new owners cut costs to improve the restaurant's profitability.”

profitability is a measure.

Where it comes from

Old French
profitable
English
profitable
English, today
profitability

From profitable + -ity. profitable comes from Old French profitable, equivalent to profit + -able.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

profitability in the wild

The overall industry attractiveness does not imply that every firm in the industry will return the same profitability.
Porter's five forces analysis
ROS is an indicator of profitability and is often used to compare the profitability of companies and industries of differing sizes.
Operating margin
Risk-adjusted return on capital (RAROC) is a risk-based profitability measurement framework for analysing risk-adjusted financial performance and providing a consistent view of profitability across businesses.
Risk-adjusted return on capital
As the value of the profitability index increases, so does the financial attractiveness of the proposed project.
Profitability index
Companies such as WorldCom, Global Crossing, and Lucent Technologies had achieved enormous market valuations based on expectations of continued growth and profitability.
Telecoms crash

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the profitable family

profitable

profitability — used about once every 18,318 pages · #13,113 · point at the bar for the others

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