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.

Ratios are computed from figures in the same payload, at no extra cost: order financials as normal. A period where no ratio has both operands returns "ratios": null.

The definitions are the same for every jurisdiction, so a German company and an Italian one are directly comparable.

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 reasons, and the response says 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. The field is null and its name appears in notSignificant.

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

N.S. applies to a zero denominator, a return or gearing measured against negative shareholders' funds, negative capital employed, non-positive financial expenses for interestCover, and a value so extreme it overflows.

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, except costOfEmployeesToRevenue, which needs none.

Not computed

Four ratios from the wider standard set are absent because Kausate does not 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.

A missing operand is never treated as zero: a ratio whose operands are missing is null, and if no ratio has both operands the entire ratios field is null.