SAN DIEGO, Calif., Oct 21, 2002 — ICON Group International Ltd. released studies on labor productivity and financial benchmarks for Potomac Electric Power Co.
The studies attempt to answer the following questions:
Financial benchmarks
How does Potomac Electric Power Company’s balance sheet structure differ from global benchmarks?
Does Potomac Electric Power Company hold more cash and short-term assets?
Does it have more retained earnings compared to the benchmarks?
Does it hold a higher concentration of long-term debt?
Does Potomac Electric Power Company have relatively higher pre-tax margins compared to global benchmarks?
Labor productivity benchmarks and international gap analysis
Are workers at Potomac Electric Power Company productive? There is no absolute answer to this economic question.
The second study considers how labor deployment and productivity indicators for Potomac Electric Power Company differ from the global benchmarks. It looks at the amount of labor required to operate Potomac Electric Power Company and the resulting return on human investment.
What is the ratio of short-term and long-term assets to employee? What are comparative capital-labor ratios? What are the average operating expenses per employee in Potomac Electric Power Company compared to benchmarks in the Electric Services sector?
Reports for over 143 Electric Services companies are available now, including the following:
AES Corp., Ameren Corp., American Electric Power Co Inc, Cinergy Corp., CMS Energy Corp., Consolidated Edison Inc., Constellation Energy Group Inc., Dominion, DTE Energy Company, Duke Energy Corp., Enron Corp., Exelon Corp., Firstenergy Corp., GPU Inc., Mirant Corp, Niagara Mohawk Power Corpn, Nisource Inc., Northeast Utilities Inc., Pinnacle West Capital Corpn, PPL Corp., Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., Reliant Energy Inc., The Southern Co, and TXU Corp.
The methodologist for this study is Philip Parker, Eli Lilly Chair Professor of Innovation, Business and Society at INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France and Singapore). According to Professor Parker, “With the globalization of markets, greater foreign competition, and the reduction of barriers to entry, it becomes all the more important to benchmark a company’s financial indicators on a worldwide basis. World stock markets have recently witnessed a return to fundamental financial analysis. “
The goal of the reports is to assist consultants, financial managers, strategic planners, and corporate officers in gauging certain indicators of Potomac Electric Power Company’s financial and human resource structure.
Professor Parker states, “We are intrigued by the wide variations in basic financial and productivity measures between Potomac Electric Power Company and other Electric Services companies. The Earnings Before Interest And Taxes (EBIT), for example, varied from 0.32 to 70.83. We see this type of variation in the hundreds of ratios that we estimate.”
Methodology
The report uses a proprietary methodology to generate international financial and human resource benchmarks and measure gaps that might be revealed from such an exercise.
Using common-size statements, ICON Group International Ltd. prepares these vertical analyses by pooling statistics on tens of thousands of companies across over 40 countries and applying a seven-stage methodology. (1) identification of industry classifications, (2) firm-level data collection and aggregation, (3) standardization of raw statistics, (4) filtering outliers, (5) calculation of global norms, (6) projection of deviations and gaps, and (7) projection of ranks and percentiles.
The studies are now available direct from the publisher. E-mail [email protected] for more information.
About ICON Group Ltd.
ICON Group Ltd. assists managers with global benchmarking, gap analysis, and productivity studies. Clients can create their own benchmarks by choosing their competitors from among over 20,000 companies.
ICON Group said the report was not prepared on behalf of or for Potomac Electric Power Company.
Link: www.icongrouponline.com/press_release/liste.asp?kw=potomac+electric
Source: ICON Group International, Ltd.
