CHICAGO — When Trade Show Executive (TSE) has asked leading professionals what skills have contributed the most to their growth, many mention having strong business acumen, and understanding P&L statements are a key component to that skillset.
To help young professionals and rising leaders sharpen their P&L reading skills, TSE put together a brief crash course into reading and understanding these imperative statements.
What is a P&L?
A P&L is a Profit & Loss statement, which reports whether a business is profitable or not through calculating its revenue, expenses, profits and losses.
How Do I Read It?
Here are some key terms and calculations to know for reading a P&L:
- Revenue: Total income (before any expenses are deducted).
- Expenses: Expenses include line items like wages, trainings, insurance, depreciation and travel, among other things that cost the business money.
- Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): The COGS refers to the direct costs that are associated with delivering services or producing goods.
- Gross Profit: Gross profit is calculated by subtracting COGS from Total Revenue. It represents what remains after direct costs are accounted for and deducted.
- Net Income: This figure is also known as the “bottom line.” Net income refers to the business’s earnings once all expenses, direct and indirect, are subtracted from its total revenue. It is calculated by subtracting all expenses from total revenue.
- EBITDA: Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciations and Amortization (EBITDA) is also commonly shown on P&Ls, helping to determine a company’s valuation.
How Do I Leverage P&Ls?
To learn more about how events industry professionals can leverage P&L knowledge to level-up their careers, TSE connected with Kristina Rogers, Vice President, ReedPop Global Comics Portfolio, and a 2022 TSE Woman to Watch, to find out how she’s built and used her financial acumen.
MADDY: If an event leader wanted to look at a P&L to find areas where they can create room for investment in enhancements, what line items are best to examine first?
KRISTINA: For fan‑focused B2C events, I read a P&L differently than I would for a traditional trade show.
I start with the biggest structural drivers: our build and A/V, onsite labor and temp staff, and guest‑related costs. On our shows, guarantees, travel, hospitality, content production and security can escalate quickly. Guest and content investments absolutely drive yield on our shows — but only when they’re tied to clear outcomes. If costs are rising faster than the revenue lift, that’s where I pause.
Production complexity is another area I look at closely. Over time, builds get bigger, stages get more custom, features stack on top of each other, we’re buying 100 bean bags each year for no particular reason, that kind of thing. Some of that meaningfully elevates the fan experience. Some of it becomes habit. Challenging whether every layer is truly earning its keep can free up capital without weakening the brand.
Marketing can be a lever, but we focus on efficiency before reduction. In pop‑culture events, demand cycles shift fast, and acquisition costs can spike. Improving targeting and conversion protects both margin and reach.
And I almost always explore revenue before expense. Ticket strategy, VIP programs, merchandise and sponsorships — the smartest way to fund an enhancement is to design it so it funds itself. Everything we build serves a revenue stream, and while we know in year one that new concept probably won’t cover the costs, by year three it should be delivering a good margin. Cutting should be the last lever, not the first.
At a portfolio level, the P&L also helps guide capital allocation across shows. Not every event needs to expand at the same rate in the same year. Sometimes you protect margin on a mature show to fund innovation or growth in another market. The question isn’t just how to optimize one event — it’s where the next dollar across the portfolio creates the most long-term value.
MADDY: Have you seen a leader leverage financial fluency to advance their career? How did that play out?
KRISTINA: Yes — and you can usually pinpoint the moment when someone stops pitching ideas and starts owning the business.
In our world, strong creative instincts are table stakes. What separates people is when they can explain what their idea does to the P&L. Not just why it’s exciting, but how it affects ticket yield, guest cost exposure, retention or sponsor value.
I’ve seen team members step into bigger roles after taking on a tough financial problem. For example, a guest program where guarantees were climbing faster than the revenue lift. Instead of just adding more names to the lineup, they reworked the structure: clearer tiers, smarter pricing, tighter cost control. The fan experience held up, and margin improved. That changes how people see you.
When you can walk into a room and say, “Here’s the upside, here’s the risk, and here’s how we protect the downside,” you’re operating at a different level. That’s usually when the scope expands.
MADDY: For those not directly responsible for a budget but aspiring to hold leadership roles, how should they begin learning the financial side of the business?
KRISTINA: Start by understanding what actually drives profitability, and spend time in the areas that aren’t profitable as well. One of the key things someone can do is take a smaller revenue stream that may be struggling (maybe from a lack of attention or poor strategy) and revitalize it. That struggling revenue opportunity becomes a project and, depending on the person, a primary focus of their next role.
On the revenue side: ticket yield, attendance mix, premium experiences, sponsorship growth and merchandise.
On the cost side: venue terms, labor models, security scaling, guarantees and production.
Ask to sit in on budget reviews and listen to forecast discussions. You don’t need to build the spreadsheet to understand the engine.
Then connect your work to financial impact. If you’re in marketing, know your acquisition cost and lifetime value. If you’re in content, understand how programming influences tiers and renewals. If you’re in operations, know your cost per head and where scale efficiencies flatten.
Financial fluency comes from repetition. It’s less about accounting mechanics and more about understanding how decisions shape performance.
MADDY: At the executive level, how do you communicate financial performance across the organization? What should early-career professionals pay attention to?
KRISTINA: With senior leadership, I’m very straightforward. What drove the result? Where did we outperform? Where are we exposed? What don’t I have the answers for? And what are we going to do about it?
If margin tightened, was it guest costs? Cost inflation? Soft ticket yield? If we overdelivered, was that pricing strategy, sponsorship mix, a strong IP cycle? I focus on the drivers and the trade-offs. Where are we choosing to invest, and where are we deliberately pulling back?
At that level, it’s less about reporting numbers and more about judgment. Are we protecting the long-term health of the brand while still running a disciplined business that’s hitting growth goals? That’s the real conversation.
With my team, it’s different. I translate it into what it means for their decisions and try to provide a practical understanding. Context, information and ideas should accompany every financial performance conversation within a team — it puts the numbers into reality and keeps everyone’s eyes from glazing over.
Are we seeing pressure on guest costs? Then programming strategy has to be sharper. Is marketing acquisition getting more expensive? Then targeting and conversion matter more than ever, and we need to figure out if they need more investment. Are we growing high-margin revenue like sponsorship and premium experiences? Then we double down on what’s working.
For early-career professionals, I’d say this: Don’t just look at revenue. Look at what’s underneath it and look at the past few years of the revenue story. Is growth coming from higher prices or more volume? Are costs rising faster than demand? Those patterns tell you where the business is strong and where it’s fragile.
If you understand what’s really driving performance and where the pressure points are, you’ll start thinking like someone who runs the show, not just someone who works on it.
MADDY: Is there an example where a P&L insight led to a broader organizational decision?
KRISTINA: Yes. We’ve had moments where margin analysis showed that certain high‑cost programming or guest strategies weren’t generating enough retention or per‑cap upside to justify their scale. They had always “felt essential,” but the data told a different story.
We shifted to more disciplined guest-line ups and programming investments, clearer ROI expectations and stronger monetization through premium tiers. In parallel, we redirected production spend from lower‑impact complexity into experiences with measurable fan satisfaction and revenue contribution.
The bigger shift wasn’t just financial; it changed our decision‑making. We now define success metrics upfront (revenue, retention, brand equity, community impact) before approving major spend.
A P&L isn’t just a scorecard. It’s a prioritization tool. It forces clarity about where value is being created, where it’s leaking and how to allocate capital across a portfolio of fan‑driven businesses.
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