Is a company’s profit fact or narrative?

Here’s a hypothetical situation. A journalist calls up the top management of a private company and requests a discussion on the company’s performance. The management agrees. As part of the longer conversation between the parties, the company says it is profitable. The journalist then asks, what kind of profit? The management says it has reported profit after taxes. Excellent, replies the journalist and reports the company’s profit after tax as an example of stellar performance. Now here’s an instance of a somewhat similar exchange from a recent story in TechCrunch:

Financially, Leverage has seen sharp growth — and turned …