Gross margin

The share of each pound or dollar of sales left after paying the direct cost of what was sold.

How it’s calculated

Gross profit ÷ revenue, where gross profit is revenue minus the cost of the goods or services sold.

How to read it

A software company might keep 80% of revenue as gross profit; a supermarket might keep under 10%. A high gross margin usually points to pricing power or low production costs. It says nothing yet about overheads such as staff, marketing or rent.

Banks have no “cost of goods”, so they don’t report a gross margin and StockDecks leaves it out of their score. For insurers and other financial companies the figure exists but isn’t very comparable with other industries’.

How StockDecks scores it

Higher scores better. On the general benchmark, 5% counts as weak, 20% as typical and 40% as strong, with sector-specific benchmarks where normal levels differ.

It is one of the measures behind the Profitability rating. Every measure, benchmark and weighting is set out on the methodology page.

Real examples

Across the 89 companies StockDecks has a page for with this figure available, as of 24 October 2026, the middle value is 47.1%.

Lowest

Lucid -100.6% · Glencore 3.4% · Boeing 4.7%

Highest

National Grid 100% · United Utilities 98.5% · Sage 92.6%

Figures from Yahoo Finance, captured 24 October 2026. Being high or low on one measure says little on its own — each company page shows how this measure sits alongside the others.