Some Financial Statistics and Numbers for Coatings Companies

Annual reports for 14 coatings companies were examined to analyze recent sales growth; average gross profit margin percentage; average research & development expenditure to revenue ratio; and average operating income to revenue ratio for the companies.  The following table shows the coatings companies’ names and their 2014 and 2013 revenues (in US dollars):

company name	revenue 2014	revenue 2013
akzo nobel	18,234,693,878	18,633,461,047
prg	15,360,000,000	14,265,000,000
sherwin williams	11,131,000,000	10,186,000,000
valspar	4,522,000,000	4,104,000,000
axalta	4,361,700,000	3,951,100,000
kansai	2,910,545,772	2,896,588,749
asian paints	1,835,384,203	1,709,826,703
himpel	1,655,612,245	1,582,375,479
shawcor	1,644,908,616	1,725,490,196
chugoku marine paints	969,446,236	895,426,382
tikkurila	788,775,510	833,971,903
dai nippon torgo	643,263,912	691,815,164
berger paints	588,476,264	546,639,097
kunsul	284,251,156	280,399,638

The average revenue growth rate from 2013 to 2014 for these companies is computed to be 3.4%, which happens to be the gross world product growth rate for 2014 (based on data at a Wikipedia site; click here to read this data).   These 14 companies probably have sales in a high percentage of the world’s countries so it may not be surprising that their average product growth rate reflects the gross world product growth rate.

These companies' financial performances represented by the average gross product margin percentage (36.7% - 2014; 35.7% - 2013) and the operating income as a percentage of revenue (9.3% - 2014; 9.0% - 2013) seem reasonably good.

The average percentage of research & development expenditure to revenues (1.7% for both 2014 and 2014) seems a little less than many industrial sector averages, which tend to be in the 2 to 3% range.  Perhaps because the coatings industry is a very mature industry, less opportunity for new innovation is pursued.