Skip to Content
The Finance Book, 2nd Edition
book

The Finance Book, 2nd Edition

by Stuart Warner, Si Hussain
April 2022
Beginner
535 pages
11h 35m
English
Pearson Education
Content preview from The Finance Book, 2nd Edition

23 Profitability performance measures

‘Profit is not the legitimate purpose of business. The legitimate purpose of business is to provide a product or service that people need and do it so well that it’s profitable.’

James Rouse, US real estate developer, civic activist and philanthropist

In a nutshell

Profit is often heralded as the key financial goal of a business.

It is more important, however, to measure profit in the context of the investment required to generate that profit. Return on investment, as opposed to profit alone, is a superior measure of financial success.

To achieve long-run viability a business must ensure that its return on investment is greater than its cost of finance.

Need to know

Why is this important?

To achieve ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

The Finance Book

The Finance Book

Stuart Warner, Si Hussain
Principles of Managerial Finance, 15th Edition

Principles of Managerial Finance, 15th Edition

Scott B. Smart, Chad J. Zutter, Lawrence J. Gitman

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781292402000