Amateur calculation of earnings for a company. Correct?

[Nikolas]

Please do excuse me. In the past I've always found the comfort of good willing help in here (gen-gen) and thus here I am asking again for ideas.

Is there any way of finding out how a company is doing financially, when it is not in the stock market? Is there any way of finding out how many sales it's done the past month/year/something? Is there any way of calculating the profit a company has?

Let me give an example:

East West has had 3 group buys in the past 4 months. Each product surpassed the limit of 50% (and 60% in one case), so they actually DEFINATELY sold more than 2000 products, each costing 500$. That's the minimum, cause I don't know the numbers, but it must be AT LEAST that (since the group buy went through the roof). 2000x500=1,000,000$ . Now... All of these people were offered an extra 40% (all 2000+), which means that at least half of them must've bought something else... Right now EW has a 50% sale on most of the products they have.

All of this make me think that in the 2nd half of 2006 they must've got at least 2,000,000$.

Of course it's not net profit. You need to hire the orchestra(s) to do it, the programmers and so on. From all of this I do believe that the orchestra is the biggest expense, at 100s of thousands of dollars probably. I don't think that they have a huge ammount of programers hanging around, and well neither the marketing team or anything else is big enough, to give escue to more than 50 people team in total. The actual cost for making the DVDs+manual+cover+box must be around 2$? (or something...)

BTW, I do think that EW, is promoting it's own products or something ,but have no idea how this works and how much uit cots, to get your products on the stores...

So based on those calculations I could make an estimate that this particular company ios doing...ok... Probably much better than that, cause they have a full range of products,  and I'm doing all my calculations on the 3 of the group buy + 1.

Is my thinking correct? Am I missing something?

No matter that I'd love to get the actual figures right, I think that I'm finaly just itnerested if it's thousans, or millions they're earning, and if it is millions, how much...

This could apply to all companies maybe...

It would be actually interesting to see how much money did a certain, any, company earn with these kind of calculations.

Or maybe I'm just flying in the clouds... Dunno... IF so, wake me up and let the thread die naturaly (even delete it... don't mind really... :-/)

[ildu]

I didn't read all that, so forgive me if I sound a bit daft .

Other than just adding up the numbers and making a projection, you could try the various Break-Even Analysis calculators on the Internet:

http://www.steinermarketing.com/calc_break_even.htm
http://www.jaxworks.com/calc6.htm

[RickJ]

There are a couple of things you might try to gather data.

• If they were a US company I would try looking them up in the Thomas Register (a directory of US manufacturers and their offerings).  I suppose there is a UK equivalent but I don't know what it is.
  
  
• You can ask the US Dept of Commerce what they know about the company.  They will at least be able to give you phone numbers of the top executives in the company.  Ask them who in the company would be able and willing to tell you their earnings or give you an idea of how big or successful they are.   Perhaps Public Relations or something like that.  Again I guess there is an equivalent UK goverment agency.  (have I remembered correctly that you are living in the UK?)
  
  
• You can get a credit report of the company for a small fee.  That should tell you smoething about them.
  
  
• If the company were a privately held corporation you could contact the "Secretary of State"  for the state in which they are incorporated.   Each year corporations must file an annual report which I believe are of public record.   
  
  
• If they have been ever been in a lawsuit you may be able to find information about them in the court documents.
  
  That's all I can think of for now.  Hope some of this is helpful.

[Kweepa]

From all of this I do believe that the orchestra is the biggest expense, at 100s of thousands of dollars probably.

That depends - what is the orchestra? For a couple of games I worked on, the musician would use an eastern European orchestra to record 3-4 minute pieces, and charge us 1500 euros or so. He hired the orchestra to record much longer soundtracks for other games, and squeezed our music in, but I don't think he massively undercharged us. So it could be 10s of thousands, rather than 100s of thousands.

...ah, but I see East West use the LSO. Never mind then

[Nikolas]

First of all thanks guys.

Steve. I don't think that the orchestra EW worked with made the same arrangements as an orchestra making a recording. It is a different deal and different licensing... It's a holwe lot different issue having me (as a pianist) playing for a game soundtrack, and sampling me to earn millions as a company... At least I think so. Otherwise things are much better than I thought for the companies concerned in sampling...

Other than that, yes I do believe that Eastern Europe orhcestras charge somewhat lower rates (maybe ridiculous lower ones), and I do know composers who've flown to Moldavia or something to make a recording, squeezing in whatever they could...

Again thanks guys.

No luck with all the info you have me, yet but anyways trying different things.