Profit projections

Question

a) Does Stats Canada do any projecting of profits in the future by industry?

b) BTW, I'm looking for profits of pharmaceutical firms for the past 10 years. So far, all I can determine is to use CANSIM (Table 301-0003 and 301-0006 to get revenues and then subtract cost of goods sold and employee costs to get profits. If anyone has other ideas, I would really appreciate it. There is a NAICS code for these firms (325410).

Answers

1. a) As far as I know, Statistics Canada does not project/forecast profits for industry. The only thing we actually forecast is population projections.

2. b) If you subscribe to the Financial Post corporate database, that does contain a profit field (expressed as a percentage).

3. b) Another alternative is to use Strategis's Performance Plus. Industry Canada's web site has a decent interface and your user can pull some stats for 1993, 1995, 1997, 2000, and 2002. The profit aspect is already calculated for you and you get a lot in information of interest (COGS, salaries, etc.).

You can access Performance Plus from the following web address:
http://www.sme.ic.gc.ca
and click on "Create your own profile" from the main body of the page. Stats for 1993 - 1997 are based on SIC codes and those for 2000 and 2002 are based on NAICS. You can find the concordance between the NAICS code and the SIC code by using the following web page:
http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Standard/concordances/
naics02-to-sice80.htm
(from what I can tell, 325410 is divided into 1) E3712 *Industrial Organic Chemicals n.e.c. and 2) E3741 * Pharmaceutical and Medicine Industry.)

Statistics Canada's Small Business Profiles are also part of the DLI collection, but it sounds like the Performance Plus approach should meet your needs for now.