[bunnie]

I'm not an accountant, but I think I'm referring to gross profit margin [1], which is revenue minus cost of goods sold (which is small for an IP licensing company, any company that actually sells hardware will be a fraction of that).

I think your math refers to operating margin, that's after they subtract all the operating overheads which are fixed, and not proportional to sales volume. In other words a 96% gross margin means they have virtually no friction to increasing sales.

Compare to Intel statement [2], they have a 35.8% gross margin and a negative operating margin this year, which would be the apples to apples comparison against 96% gross margin and 19.6% operating margin in the F1.

My read on the income line is they do a good job of 'spending money', but they are signaling that can be turned into things like dividends to shareholders once they IPO, perhaps by doing short sighted things like cutting R&D expenses and/or accounting tricks.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_margin

[2] https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1637/...

[redtriumph]

in case, any one looking for F-1 (F1) for ARM, it is here.

(S-1 is for domestic corporations and F-1 is for foreign ones)

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1973239/000119312523...