umairk wrote:
A company's current revenue is £1million a year, 10% is profit. If over the next 3 years revenues increase by 10% a year and costs increase by £120000 a year, what will be the profit margin?
6.1
3.2
4.6
-2.1
5.6
I worked it out as Revenues at year 3 are 1.331 million, Costs are 1.26 million and so profit is 0.071 million giving a profit margin of 0.071/1.331 *100= 5.33
Any advice would be appreciated, thanks!
Dear
umairk,
I'm happy to help with this.
I agree with all of your calculations.
Currently
revenue = £1M
profit = £100K
cost = £900K
If revenue increases by 10%, that's £1M(1.1)^3 = 1.331M, which you correctly calculated.
If costs increase by £120K a year, that's 900K + 3*120K = 1.26M which you correctly calculated.
Difference in revenue and cost should be profit, which is 1.331M - 1.26M = 0.071M = 71K which you correctly calculated.
In my understanding,
profit margin would be (profit)/(revenue) x 100 = 0.071/1.331 *100= 5.33%, as you calculated
and
profit percentage would be (profit)/(cost) x 100 = 0.071/1.26*100 = 5.635% --- this looks suspiciously like answer
(E).
These two terms are, I believe, how the concepts are discussed in American economics. I don't know if the exact terms are used the same way around the world. It may be that whoever wrote the question meant the thing we Americans call "profit percentage", but that person knew the same idea as "profit margin." The GMAT tends to steer clear of all ambiguities related to terminology. Rather than use a technical term that may have one meaning in one place and another meaning in another, they are scrupulously careful to say things such as "
what are profits in the last year as a percentage of costs in that year" --- so that even a person unacquainted with the terminology could find the answer. The GMAT definitely expects folks to have a handle on the basic ideas of cost, profit, and revenue, as you do, but I have never seen them use some of these other terms, such as "profit margin" or "profit percentage". They will always be very explicit about that: they are not interested in testing the precise meaning of more obscure economic terms.
Does all this make sense?
Mike