Net profit

What is left for the owners after every cost, including interest and tax. It is the number headlines quote and the number that flows into earnings per share and into retained earnings.

Take the exporter's ₹960 crore of operating profit, subtract ₹140 crore of interest and ₹205 crore of tax, and net profit is ₹615 crore.

Its weakness is that it sits at the bottom of the waterfall, so it absorbs every choice made above it: depreciation policy, one-off gains on asset sales, tax credits, a change in the useful life of a plant. Two years of net profit can differ for reasons that have nothing to do with the business.

For a group, the version that matters is profit attributable to the owners of the parent, which appears below the consolidated total and after the share belonging to minority holders in partly-owned subsidiaries. Using consolidated profit where attributable profit was needed overstates earnings per share by exactly the minority's share, and in Indian groups with large partly-owned operating companies that gap can exceed a fifth of the reported number. The distinction is printed on the face of the statement and is skipped more often than almost anything else.

Read it, then read what produced it.