Long time no see.
经过一段漫长的项目期，小编终于又有时间更新这里了。昨天我参加了一个商业连锁的业绩说明会，觉得挺有意思，那么今天就给大家分享一下业内资深人士是如何描述公司业绩的。
首先介绍一下这家公司的背景：它是一家连锁快餐集团，在世界各地有几十家分店（尚未进入我国），主营披萨、汉堡等老外喜欢的食物。在下文中为了简便起见，我就用集团代替了它。集团有几个餐饮品牌，分别也用A、B、C等代替。
业绩说明会上有公司的CEO和COO以及投资者关系（IR）总监出席。IR总监首先说了些场面话，然后是COO介绍最近一个时期的业绩，然后CEO总结发言，最后是提问部分。我们只看一下运营总监（COO）是如何描述公司业绩变化的。
COO打开PPT，第一页就是一些免责声明条款（Disclaimer），其中有这样一段话：
Any statements in this presentation that are not statements of historical fact may be considered to be forward-looking statements. Words such as "may," "will," "expect," "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "intends," "goal," "objective," "seek," "attempt," or variations of these or similar words, identify forward-looking statements.
文中列出的这些词语，都是包含着对未来的预测，谁也不知道准不准，不准别找公司。
下面是正文，首先要提的就是业绩总览：
Total revenue for the quarter increased 18% to $11 million 本季度总收入增长到
Growth from B segment 增长来自集团下属的B品牌
Cost of sales improved to 33.1% from 33.6% 销售费用改善，从之前的33.6%下降到33.1%
G&A improved to 12.3% from 17.8% 一般和管理费用支出(G&A)也改善了
Operating expenses improved to 54.8% from 57.3% 运营费也少了
Restaurant EBITDA increased 54% to $1.4 million
Adjusted EBITDA improved to $0.2 million compared to a loss of $(0.2) Second consecutive positive quarter
其中财务术语，EBITDA，指税息折旧及摊销前利润，是Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization的缩写，即未计利息、税项、折旧及摊销前的利润。这个缩写常见于报表，不过非财务人士混个眼熟即可。
COO列出的这几个要点中，improve用的最多，然后就是increase，这都是描述业绩常用的好词。
接下来的几张PPT都是对以上要点的具体解释，列数据，描述趋势。在解释为何B品牌增长贡献最大的时候，COO是这么说的：
The B group now accounts for more than half of our total revenue at 52.3%, which is up from 45.1% last year. You will notice that A's revenues has declined as a percent of total revenue from 39.3% to 33.5%. I should note that these percentages have already even adjusted to remove the revenues from Australia and Hungry, when apples-to-apples comparison for the contract would be more significant if the prior year included those discontinued operations.
Account for是对...负责，导致...，引起...的意思。例句：
Computers account for 5% of the country's commercial electricity consumption.
该国商业用电量的5%都是电脑产生的。
Apples-to-apples comparison是公平比较的意思，比较双方放在同一尺度上，苹果跟苹果比，而不是跟香蕉比。在这里，集团因为A品牌在澳大利亚和匈牙利关了店，所以数据已经调整了以示公平。
好消息说完了，接下来COO描述喜忧参半的消息。
We saw mix results with regards to same store sales comps, C saw a 3% positive comp and B were at 0.5%. U.S. D were modestly positive in 0.8% while the International D flipped versus prior year on a local currency basis. The South African revenues have been impacted for a number of quarters by weaker local economic conditions, which is part of the reason we been focusing primarily on cost reduction and margin improvement in that region. While the UK continued to revenue at a relatively high level, but not quite as well as in the prior period. And that is an area we’re focusing more attention on going forward.
Mix results简单讲就是有好有坏，在下文中COO做了进一步解释：
集团在南非的分公司由于经济不好，业绩受到impacted影响（潜台词是经济大环境如此，我们也没有办法），所以要进一步控制成本、提高利润；英国还不错，但不如以前好（后面还提了脱欧对英镑的影响，参观都是本地货币结算）；在美国的D品牌（U.S. D）比国际上的D品牌（international D）好，前者增长modestly positive即勉强为正，后者则反转(flip)了。
Flip是快速变化、快速翻转的意思，比如:
Tom flipped the pancake with a spatula. 汤姆用锅铲把煎饼翻面。
以上来看，COO描述业绩的词语还是很简单直白的。