This is actually really great material. One of the things that I hate about the financial press is that they obfuscate this heavily with really bad journalism.

This is actually really great material. One of the things that I hate about the financial press is that they obfuscate this heavily with really bad journalism. They love to take Net Income, divide it by "widgets sold" (whatever that might be for a particular business), and proudly proclaim that this business is literally losing money on every sale! That's not true, and an analysis of COGS data is the key that you need to understand the difference. It can be murky, just as this article makes clear, but there are often opportunities to find profitable businesses in this data. The more negative press during the "pre-profit" days, the better. The corollary is that this can also find the really bad companies, like MoviePass.