CVST (Covista Communications) Selling, General, & Admin. Expense: $22.83 Mil (TTM As of Apr. 2005)

Covista Communications  (OTCPK:CVST) Selling, General, & Admin. Expense Explanation

An efficient operation keeps SGA costs low and thus has higher profit margin. The percentage of SGA relative to total revenue is an indication of how efficiently the company operates. Compare this percentage among the companies in the same industry is a good way of finding more efficient operations. A comparison of the SGA cost relative to the revenue with the historical value can also be an indication of how efficient the company has become.

Warren Buffett likes companies with consistent SGA as the percentage of gross profit.

Companies with no durable competitive advantage show wild variation in SG&A as % of Gross Profit.

If SGA is less than 30% of Gross Profit, it is fantastic. If SGA is nearing 100%, it is is in highly competitive industry.

Covista Communications Selling, General, & Admin. Expense Related Terms

The historical data trend for Covista Communications's Selling, General, & Admin. Expense can be seen below:

* For Operating Data section: All numbers are indicated by the unit behind each term and all currency related amount are in USD.
* For other sections: All numbers are in millions except for per share data, ratio, and percentage. All currency related amount are indicated in the company's associated stock exchange currency.

Covista Communications Selling, General, & Admin. Expense Chart

Covista Communications Annual Data
	Trend	Jan96	Jan97	Jan98	Jan99	Jan00	Jan01	Jan02	Jan03	Jan04	Jan05
Selling, General, & Admin. Expense		Get a 7-Day Free Trial					27.17	31.00	43.46	31.40	27.05

Covista Communications Quarterly Data
	Jul00	Oct00	Jan01	Apr01	Jul01	Oct01	Jan02	Apr02	Jul02	Oct02	Jan03	Apr03	Jul03	Oct03	Jan04	Apr04	Jul04	Oct04	Jan05	Apr05
Selling, General, & Admin. Expense	Get a 7-Day Free Trial															8.66	8.31	5.49	4.59	4.43

CVST vs FULO, TWER, DTGI: Selling, General, & Admin. Expense Comparison

For the Telecom Services subindustry, Covista Communications's Selling, General, & Admin. Expense, along with its competitors' market caps and Selling, General, & Admin. Expense data, can be viewed below:

* Competitive companies are chosen from companies within the same industry, with headquarter located in same country, with closest market capitalization; x-axis shows the market cap, and y-axis shows the term value; the bigger the dot, the larger the market cap. Note that "N/A" values will not show up in the chart.

Covista Communications Selling, General, & Admin. Expense vs Telecommunication Services Industry

For the Telecommunication Services industry and Communication Services sector, Covista Communications's Selling, General, & Admin. Expense distribution charts can be found below:

* The bar in red indicates where Covista Communications's Selling, General, & Admin. Expense falls into.

Covista Communications Selling, General, & Admin. Expense Calculation

Selling, General, & Admin. Expense (SGA) includes the direct and indirect costs and all general and administrative expenses of a company. For instance, personnel cost, advertising, rent, communication costs are all part of SGA.

Selling, General, & Admin. Expense for the trailing twelve months (TTM) ended in Apr. 2005 adds up the quarterly data reported by the company within the most recent 12 months, which was $22.83 Mil.

* For Operating Data section: All numbers are indicated by the unit behind each term and all currency related amount are in USD.
* For other sections: All numbers are in millions except for per share data, ratio, and percentage. All currency related amount are indicated in the company's associated stock exchange currency.

Covista Communications Business Description