Financial Ratios

Overview

Kausate computes up to twenty-nine standard ratios from each financial period's income statement, balance sheet and headcount. Registries do not need to publish a precomputed ratio block: when the filed statements contain at least one complete operand pair, including a zero denominator, the period gains a ratios block.

They are derived at response time from figures already in the same payload. There is no extra call, no extra credit, and no separate endpoint: order financials as normal. A period where no ratio has both operands returns "ratios": null.

The definitions match the ratio set used by commercial financial databases, so a German company and an Italian one are directly comparable even though their registries file in different formats.

curl -X POST "https://api.kausate.com/v2/companies/finance/sync" \
  -H "X-API-Key: your_api_key" \
  -H "Kausate-Version: 2026-08-01" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"kausateId": "co_zz_1a82xPhiHFOOz7CbClDfEI"}'

{
  "result": {
    "statements": [
      {
        "metadata": { "periodEnd": "2024-12-31", "currency": "EUR" },
        "incomeStatement": {
          "revenue": "1000000",
          "operatingProfit": "120000",
          "profitAfterTax": "80000"
        },
        "balanceSheet": { "totalAssets": "1500000" },
        "ratios": {
          "returnOnAssets": "5.33",
          "ebitMargin": "12.00",
          "notSignificant": []
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Reading a null: N.A. versus N.S.

A ratio is null for one of two very different reasons, and the response always tells you which.

N.A. — not available. An input the ratio needs is missing from the filing. returnOnEquity cannot be computed without total equity, so if the registry did not publish equity the field is null and nothing more is said about it.

N.S. — not significant. The ratio is computable but the result would mislead, so we refuse to publish a number. The field is null and its name appears in notSignificant.

"ratios": {
  "currentRatio": null,
  "notSignificant": ["currentRatio"]
}

The cases that produce N.S. are a zero denominator, a return measured against negative shareholders' funds, and a value so extreme it overflows. In each, publishing a numeric ratio would misrepresent the business.

So: null and listed in notSignificant means "we know, and the honest answer is that this number would mislead". null and absent from the list means "the registry did not give us the input".

Memo lines

Five statement lines can be filled in when a registry does not report them directly, provided the filed statement contains the inputs needed for the derivation. This gives by-nature filings (typical in Continental Europe) and by-function filings (typical in the UK and Ireland) the same fields:

A value the registry reported directly is never overwritten by a derived one. cashFlow here is a P&L-derived proxy; it is not the cash-flow statement's reported operating cash flow, which appears separately under cashFlowStatement.

The ratios

All percentage ratios are expressed in percent (25.00 means 25%), multiples are marked (x), and per-employee figures are in full currency units — never thousands. Everything is quoted to two decimal places.

Profitability

Capital employed is shareholders' funds + non-current liabilities. Interest paid uses financial expenses as its proxy.

Operational

Structure and liquidity

Per employee

Populated only when the registry publishes a headcount for the period.

Not computed

Four ratios from the wider standard set are deliberately absent because Kausate does not currently hold their inputs: export revenue / revenue, R&D / revenue, enterprise value / EBITDA, and market capitalisation / cash flow.

Coverage

Ratios are arithmetic over the filed figures, so what you get depends on what the registry published. A registry that files only a balance sheet yields the structure ratios and no margins; one that publishes no headcount yields no per-employee figures. Micro-entity and abridged filings are thin everywhere.

For ratio computation, Kausate never fabricates an operand or treats a missing operand as zero. Inside a ratios block, a ratio whose operands are missing is null. If no ratio has both operands, the entire ratios field is null.