Disclosure-- A contact I discuss with regularly gives me some insight into what C-suites are actually thinking. Novy-Marx (http://rnm.simon.rochester.edu/ http

Disclosure-- A contact I discuss with regularly gives me some insight into what C-suites are actually thinking. Novy-Marx (http://rnm.simon.rochester.edu/ http://rnm.simon.rochester.edu/) showed that top-line revenue growth (rather than bottom-line, the "primary measure" cited above) was the strongest predictor of share price appreciation. He may or may not have been right, but he was undoubtedly influential, in that his insight lead to the "management quality" factor in factor modeling. [The Other Side of Value: The Gross Profitability Premium, Journal of Financial Economics 108(1), 2013, 1-28. http://rnm.simon.rochester.edu/research/OSoV.pdf http://rnm.simon.rochester.edu/research/OSoV.pdf] So I would say most CEOs are looking at top-line revenue growth as their key measure. Which makes PG's distinction more of a polemic than a discriminant.