2013 Wrapup: Macro through Micro

With most of our universe finished reporting for year end 2013, we decided to write a very quick 2013 economic summary.  We first decided to eliminate financial firms from our initial analysis.

By using our normalized database, we took a look at four metrics:  Revenues, Cost of revenues, Capital Expenditures (Capex) and Cash (on the balance sheet).  We binned our universe into 3 groups by asset size.  Firms with assets greater than or equal to 3 billion USD were in one group (aka large), the 1 Billion to 3 billion group (mid size) and the firms with assets between 50M USD and 1 Billion (small). 

We took the median observation from each of the asset-sized bins. 

You will notice the negative sales growth figures from the medians of the smallest firms and the mid-sized firms, while half of the large firms did see some sales growth.  Also notice that the median cost of revenue was decreasing faster than the sales growth leading to higher gross profits, on average.  All the while cash is increasing on the balance sheets of the small and mid-size firms.  The large firms tended to buck the trend however and saw their cash positions fall.  Perhaps this is indicative of the volume of share buybacks for 2013?

Also notice something that is troubling.  The Capital expenditures for mid to large companies are generally increasing, but the small companies are lagging.  In general this is not a good sign. 

All of this work was done using Calcbench’s normalized XBRL database that is available through a subscription.  For more email us@calcbench.com.