Below is a set of indicators of sustainable earnings for various industries. With most of the indicators, there are references to papers where the indicators have been examined.
Source: Nissim, D. 2024. Earning Quality, Fundamental Analysis and Equity Valuation, Columbia Business School. At https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3794378.
Retail – (Growth in) same store sales; # of stores (total and periodic changes—opened, closed, relocated); selling/floor space; number of cars in the parking lots (e.g., Kang et al. 2021); GPS foot-traffic data (e.g., Jin et al. 2020, Noh et al. 2021); consumer search data from mobile devices (Froot et al. 2017).
Hotel – # of rooms; occupancy (in %), average daily room rate (ADR), and their product (revenue per available room); # of properties owned/operated/franchised.
Casinos – gaming tables; slot machines.
Pharma and biotech – # drugs and medical devices, product pipeline (products under development by phase and therapeutic; e.g., Lev 2017), patents and trademarks, sales force, market shares of main drags, years-to-patent expiration of main drags.
Hospitals – # of facilities/hospitals; # of beds; # of visits/admissions (total, inpatient, outpatient, and equivalent [= inpatient admissions times the ratio of total inpatient and outpatient revenue to inpatient revenue]); (growth in) same facility admissions (total, inpatient, outpatient, and equivalent); average length of stay; occupancies; procedures/surgeries
Airlines – (# of) revenue passengers; revenue passenger miles/kilometers, available seat miles/kilometers, and their ratio (passenger load factor); total revenue per available seat mile/kilometer (TRASM); cost per available seat mile (CASM)
REITS – Net asset value (with underlying assets often valued by applying asset-specific capitalization rates to the related net operating income); (growth in) same property/store net operating income; various measures of funds from operations.
Home builders – Information on backlog, periodic orders, and periodic deliveries—units, average price, and value; cancelation rates.
Social media/games – daily/monthly active users; monthly unique users
Telecommunication – access lines; minutes of use; service area population and population penetration (e.g., Amir and Lev 1996)
Technology – gross bookings; book-to-bill ratio (order received divided by units shipped and billed); traffic acquisition cost
Cloud, SaaS, and other subscription companies – Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR); net dollar retention
Auto – shipment data (units); average selling price
Mining – production (quantity) by metal; average price per unit by metal; cash cost (average cost per unit of metal produced); all-in sustaining costs (operating and sustaining capital costs per unit produced)
Oil and Gas – production per day (oil, gas, natural gas liquids); total production; realized price (average price received per unit); proved/probable/possible reserves, which are reserve quantities estimated with 90%/50%/10 confidence; exploration success rate; decline rates (the rate at which capacity; reserve replacement costs
Utilities – The main driver of demand at electric and gas utilities is ambient air temperature, with cold (warm) weather driving heating (cooling) demand in the winter (summer) (e.g., Grieser et al. 2021).
Finance (banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions) – volume-rate analysis of net interest income (primarily for banks);107 assets under management; assets under custody; net flows; capital ratios (e.g., Tier 1 common capital ratio); non-performing loans/assets; risk-weighted assets; premiums written; embedded value; reserve development data (Nissim 2010)