This week takes me to one of our long-term clients in the defense industry. Now that the US election is over and the new administration is formulating, we are in a different place from a geopolitical perspective. This week, our client focuses on some good old-fashioned back-to-basic financial acumen learning through a customized business simulation.
One of the topics we are teaching is analyzing and assessing their long-term return on equity. Although it has been a few years, I am excited to dust off the DuPont Chain of Profitability as a key teaching tool. I figure it’s an interesting topic to share in a blog.
History
The name of the tools comes from the great DuPont company, which began using this formula in the 1920s, over 100 years ago. A DuPont explosives salesman, Donaldson Brown, submitted an internal efficiency report to his superiors in 1912 that contained the first version of the financial formula and it was embraced internally and at leading schools like Wharton where I first learned about it in the 1980’s.
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