In this episode of What’s Trending Now? from NAPCO Research, PRINTING United Alliance’s Chief Economist Andy Paparozzi introduces the Key Financial Ratios Program to the label and package printing community.

This initiative will enable the Alliance to establish benchmarks for essential financial metrics and help guide company leaders towards achieving and maintaining exceptional performance.

The Key Financial Ratios Program has two primary objectives:

Establish Benchmarks

The Alliance aims to set benchmarks for critical financial metrics for companies that make and sell printed products such as packaging and labels. The current list of financial ratios tracked include value added as percentage of sales, payroll/sales, factory payroll/sales, factory overhead/sales, gross profit/sales, selling expenses/sales, administrative expenses/sales, EBITDA/sales, sales/per employee, sales per salesperson.

Achieve and Maintain Excellence

The program seeks to answer pivotal questions: How can a company that makes and sells printed products reach great performance levels and sustain them? How does such a company consistently enhance efficiency and fortify margins? In an increasingly competitive industry, improvement is not optional—it’s essential. As of August 2024, 68 companies are participating in this initiative.

Program results are exclusively available to participants. But participation is open to both Printing United Alliance members and non-members. As more data is gathered over time, the Alliance will closely monitor changes in the Key Financial Ratios, understand the reasons behind these changes, and identify consistently high performers to learn from their success.

The current group of participants represent a diverse group, with annual sales ranging from less than $1 million to more than $500 million. An interactive tool has been created to help participants extract ratios based on company size, primary printing business, revenue composition, and other relevant criteria. This customization ensures that the financial metrics are most relevant to each participant’s unique business context.

To learn more about the program, email Andy Paparozzi at apaparozzi@printing.org or Onamica Dhar at odhar@printing.org. To apply to be part of the program, complete the candidate profile at https://www.research.net/r/kfrprofile.