Fyo,
re: Intel has artificially inflated revenues due to its Intel Inside program. Basically, they are taking money with one hand and giving a portion back with the other.
They are not "giving it back", they are paying for a portion of the ad to advertise the Intel brand name. And believe it or not, Intel didn't invent co-op advertising funds, they are available though (my WAG) 90%+ of consumer product companies (probably AMD included). I'm not sure how AMD spends it's marketing funds, but it certainly spends money on marketing. Does Intel spend more as a percent of revenue, probably. Is it effective, yes. You don't exclude marketing funds from productivity figures, especially since marketing effectiveness is a part of productivity.
re: Clearly, this is no indication of "efficiency". Only if the two businesses you compared operated in a similar fashion externally could you use revenue / employee as an efficiency estimate.
It's the best measure of efficiency we have, and it's pretty much standard. Go to:
yahoo.marketguide.com
At the bottom of the page are the "Efficiency" ratios. If you want to compare, below that click on AMD and pull up their numbers.
re: Additionally, you could replace 1 employee with a machine that was vastly more expensive to maintain and still wind up with a higher efficiency.
Then the folks that it took to maintain the machine would make it less efficient, no?
Revenue/employee and profit/employee are not "incredibly poor" standards. Maybe that's why you invest in AMD.
John |
