Operating margin
What a company keeps out of every 100 dollars of sales once it has paid everything needed to run the business, not just to make the product.
Start from the gross margin and subtract the costs of actually running the company: research, salaries outside the factory, marketing, administration. What remains is the operating margin.
It is the better measure of how efficiently a business is run, because it captures decisions management controls. A company can protect its gross margin by raising prices and still see its operating margin fall because it is spending heavily on research.
See also
This definition is part of the EPTA5 lexicon, written so that a reader who does not work in finance can follow our market notes without stopping. It is general information and not investment advice. Read the notes.