Your innovation machine -- a key number to track (PPE over time)

This blog follows up on last week. The effectiveness of your “innovation machine” to change PPE over time can be found with readily available information for public companies.

Back to the change in Profit Per Employee (PPE) with time. Below are 5 examples of PPE, most for 2021, obtained from publicly-available information:

Huntsman Chemical 2017. $478 MM / 10,000 employees = $48k/employee

Huntsman Chemical 2021. $1.05 B / 9000 employees = $117k/employee

Apple 2021. $94.68 B / 154,000 employees = $615k/employee

Ford 2021. $17.94 B / 183,000 employees = $98k/employee

Toyota 2021. $21 B / 373,000 employees = $56k/employee

Digitech (e.g., Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, not all shown) has a higher industry PPE than Chemicals or Automobiles, but within Automobiles, note that Ford has a higher PPE than Toyota. Also note that Huntsman more than doubled their PPE in 4 years, at a rate d(PPE) / dt = $17,250/yr.

Tracking the PPE metric over time gives valuable information about 1) your company compared within your industry, and 2) your own company at two different times.

If you’d like to explore this more, please just connect with me, both to subscribe to this blog and to let me know you want to talk.