Industry Profile & Economics

The Leading Financial Benchmarking Tool for the Printing Industry

For more than 80 years printers have been using the Printing Industries of America Ratios to benchmark their financial performance against the rest of the printing industry. Each year 16 volumes are developed from a survey of more than 500 Printing Industries of America member and non-member printing firms.

Each Ratios volume includes a report on operations, profitability, and sales factors; cost drivers and expenses; balance sheet statistics; funding ratios; leverage ratios; liquidity and activity ratios; value-added analysis; basic payroll data; employee profiles; inventory turnover; and billing cycles*.

Printing Industries of America Ratios allow you to take a close look at these areas, as well as answer key questions:

• Are my expenses too high in relation to sales?
• Is there too little or too much inventory in stock?
• Can we meet our debts as they mature?
• Should we increase our selling prices?
• How can we increase our profits?

*Standards and averages for the above categories are provided in most volumes by sales volume, region (12 American census regions), and type of product market. In many sections the statistics are provided as both a percentage of sales and as a percentage of value-added. Moreover, in most reports, statistics are provided for all respondents and for profit leaders (respondent firms in the top 25 percent of profitability).