How can I see the revenues of an LTD in Companies House?

[businessor]

Hello

How can I see the revenues of an LTD in Companies House?

I can only see their balance sheet and I am not sure if the revenues can be derived.

Thanks

 

[DWS]

Small Companies only have to file abbreviated accounts with CH, so this is all you will see

 

[pentel]

If you know the terms that the company offers (30 days eom for example) you can estimate turnover from the trade debtors.

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

Hello

How can I see the revenues of an LTD in Companies House?

I can only see their balance sheet and I am not sure if the revenues can be derived.

Thanks

You probably wont for most small companies although you might be lucky and see full accounts which include a profit and loss account for some companies as some accountants just submit full accounts.

You cant calculate revenue solely using the balance sheet.

 

[brucegreig]

As Pentel points out, you can estimate revenue from trade debtors. If a company has, say, £100k of trade debtors and you think this is probably 30 days of revenue, then you can estimate revenue is about £1.2m per year.

You can also estimate profits from the change in P&L reserve / retained profits. If they had £1m of retained losses at the end of year 1 and £0.5m losses at the end of year 2, then they have (probably) made ~£0.5m profit in the year. With accumulated losses, this is likely to be reasonably accurate, because they won't have taken out a dividend. With accumulated profits it is a bit harder, because you might not know what dividends they have taken out. (The change in accumluated profits is going to be profit for the year minus dividend extracted.)

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

As Pentel points out, you can estimate revenue from trade debtors. If a company has, say, £100k of trade debtors and you think this is probably 30 days of revenue, then you can estimate revenue is about £1.2m per year.

You can also estimate profits from the change in P&L reserve / retained profits. If they had £1m of retained losses at the end of year 1 and £0.5m losses at the end of year 2, then they have (probably) made ~£0.5m profit in the year. With accumulated losses, this is likely to be reasonably accurate, because they won't have taken out a dividend. With accumulated profits it is a bit harder, because you might not know what dividends they have taken out. (The change in accumluated profits is going to be profit for the year minus dividend extracted.)

You can use this to guess/estimate the turnover but it can give very inaccurate results especially if you look at retained profits for a small company where typically alot of the profit is taken as a dividend. I wouldnt rely on either.

 

[Spur Support Services]

Estimating revenues based on Micro Entity or Abbreviated Small Company Balance Sheets, is futile.

There are too many factors that may be affecting the balances.

However, companies retain more detailed accounts for each year, but they may see this information as commercially sensitive.
You could request data such as turnover direct from the company, if you require it to give you comfort before entering into a significant contractual relationship with the company in question.

 

[Mark T Jones]

I'd agree with the above that you are unlikely to find this information on small companies (unless by chance they have filed full accounts).

Also, that attempting to estimate is pointless and potentially very misleading.

I'm not sure what your relationship or context is with these companies; in my case it's simply a matter of ask them for the information and do nothing until they provide it.

 

[WaveJumper]

The question is what do you need the information for are you looking at this to make a business decision ie to offer credit, engage them for a contract etc