From: "Gary Britt" 

Large Margins for net profit are not all that large George.  It would be
very rare indeed for an industry to have a net profit margin in excess of
11%.  Most fall below this number by far.  Grocery stores have very low
margins that's true, but they make a profit because of the large volume of
business they do in relationship to the required investment of capital. 
The oil business on the other hand is several orders of magnitude higher in
terms of the required investment of capital.

Its simple George, you don't have to be a CPA or financial analyst to
understand that if all the finance types who following all this for a
living thought the oil industry had high profits as a percentage of sales
or in comparison to other industries or in relationship to their invested
capital, the share prices of these publicly traded companies would be bid
up accordingly and their resulting price earnings ratios would be far
higher than the measly 11.05 times earnings at which they currently trade.

Gary

"Bill Lucy"  wrote in message
news:MPG.1e07f48e963888fc98976d{at}news.barkto.com...
> In article , email{at}from_Gary_Britt.org says...
> > sure there is for various general categories, and it is certainly a
gauge of
> > whether profits are outrageous or more than normal, which 7% obviously
> > isn't.  Again that fact is reflected in their share prices as well.
>
> Your "various general categories" conflates industries with large
> margins with those with small margins.
>
> That's simply not realistic from any reasonable business POV. You can't
> expect to get a large margin in, say, groceries, but grocers still stay
> in business. Why? Because there is money in it.
>
> And grocery store margins are much less than oil company margin -- and
> on significantly less sales.
>

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5