Industry Fact Book - The KPI story

The task: A European construction company was on a high-growth path for several years. While sales figures developed beyond expectations, results could not keep pace. The company decided to set up a new KPI controlling.

First step, relevant KPIs were selected, basics (sales, EBITDA, EBIT, EBT, net profit) growth figures (yoy and CAGR) as well as profitability (margins, ROCE, return spread) and financial indicators (gearing, capital employed / sales, net debt / EBITDA, equity / total assets, short term debt ratio, pay out ratio). To find out, where the companys benchmarks then ranged, and to define target values, a comprehensive study of industry peers has been elaborated. To make sure, the figures are reliable, five years of data has been collected.

16 industry peers has been selected. Doing that, factors as size, geographical focus, sub-sectors etc. were considered. A problem showing up were mixed corporations with shares of construction in sales ranging from 40-60%. To overcome the resulting bias, the construction segments data was also collected and analysed. To complete the view, a short profile of each company was also composed.

A total of 80 balance sheets, income and CF statements has been considered, as well as notes to annual reports, segment reports and data from third sources. All data has been entered in a database, the "Market DB". There it was validated and then calculated to all the required KPIs. As there are often important notes to explain outliers or uncommon figures, each number and each KPI could be commented by the analyst. Out of the database, the report (charts, tables, comments) were generated automatically in MS Excel / Powerpoint format.

As a next step, analysis on all results were conducted and cross connections identificated. The entire report embraced 121 pages. We have put selected pages of this report into a sample report. To get the sample report, just contact us.

Note: company names and time information has been masked or modified in the sample report.

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