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Northwest 100 charts

Market cap: Giants still walk the earth
Market capitalization — the number of common shares outstanding multiplied by the share price — is essentially how much investors say a company is worth on any given day.

P-E: Are you paying too much?
One of the oldest stock-market measures, P-E isn't always easy to interpret: Large numbers can mean big risk as well as big potential reward.

Profits: The name of the game
Ultimately, making money is every company's purpose. Sooner or later, you either show a profit or shut your doors.

Profit/loss: The changing bottom line
Change year-over-year can show which direction a company is headed, but be careful. Smaller and emerging companies tend to move faster on this scale — both up and down — than their more-established counterparts.

Profit margin: From top line to bottom
This measurement indicates how much of a company's sales wind up as profit, after all expenses, taxes, etc., are deducted.

Operating income: Getting to the core
A company's operating income can tell you how well its main business is faring. But be wary.

Sales: The bigger the better?
You can't make a profit without bringing in revenue first. But big sales don't always mean big profits.

Sales growth: Fast out of the gate
Big sales numbers are impressive, but year-over-year sales growth can indicate a company on the move.

Sales per employee: Pulling the weight
By quantifying how much the average worker contributes to overall revenue, this sometimes-overlooked metric gets at a company's efficiency.

Employees: Where the jobs are
Large national retailers tend to have the most workers, but being the biggest Northwest-based employers doesn't make them the biggest employers in the Northwest.

Return on equity: How the owners are doing
This measure expresses how much profit a company is generating as a percentage of shareholders' equity.

Debt: The power of other people’s money
The debt-to-equity ratio measures how much a company relies on lenders rather than shareholders to fund its operations.

Return on assets: Using resources
A company is, essentially, a money-making machine. Assets that are paid for either by investors or lenders — buildings, raw materials, patented technology, whatever — go in one end, and with any luck, profits come out the other end.

Dividends: Cash to shareholders
In theory, investors will reward the best companies by bidding up the price of their shares.