gross profit
Revenue minus cost of revenue: what is left to pay for the team, marketing and everything else.
Gross profit is revenue minus cost of revenue: what a company keeps after delivering what it sold, before paying for its team, marketing and office. Divided by revenue it becomes the gross margin: how many kopiykas (or cents) of each unit of revenue survive delivery.
It is the first health check on a P&L. If gross margin is thin, growth can't fix the bottom line, because every new sale brings little to cover the costs of running the company. A falling gross margin is an early signal: discounts, a costlier supplier, a cheaper plan winning the mix.
Gross profit in money and gross margin in percent answer different questions. The money is what pays the bills, and it doesn't depend on how revenue is presented. The margin depends on the presentation (gross or net) and on the mix of lines. A company can see its blended margin fall while gross profit rises, simply because a lower-margin line is growing fastest.
Example
Klasna's gross profit for September–November 2026, by line:
Teams has the lowest margin and the highest gross profit per lesson: 271,200 ÷ 800 lessons = 339 UAH, against about 143 for a 1:1 lesson in November. Teams is shown gross, with the tutor's payout inside cost of revenue; 1:1 lessons are shown net. As Teams grows, the blended margin will fall while gross profit rises.
Common mistakes
- Comparing margins across different presentations. Gross and net revenue give the same profit and very different margins.
- Cutting a line for its low margin. Look at gross profit per unit and in total before slowing anything down.
- Reading the blended margin without the mix. It moves when lines grow at different speeds, even if nothing got worse.
- Stopping at gross profit. A healthy margin still has to cover operating expenses.
Learn it in the course
- How to read a P&L, top to bottom · How to read a profit and loss statement: revenue, cost of revenue, gross profit, operating expenses, EBITDA and operating profit, and what the P&L doesn't tell you.
- Case: a board report for a new board member · A board report on the quarter: rebuild Klasna's autumn P&L from raw lines, separate what will repeat from what won't, and back the memo with numbers.
- Take rate: what a marketplace really earns · Take rate and GMV vs revenue: why the money families pay is not all Klasna's revenue, and when a company reports the full price instead.
- Working capital: who pays whom first · Prepayments, payouts and invoices: the cash conversion cycle, working capital on one date, when negative working capital funds growth and why other lines eat cash.