5-minute presentation training

You Can Present Your Work.
Just Follow a Formula.

(hopefully they're charts)

The Five-Step Formula

Every chart on this page uses the same delivery sequence. Memorize these five steps and you won't worry about what to say next. The formula applies to most visuals an analyst would create and present.

  1. Explain the horizontal axis.
  2. Explain the vertical axis.
  3. Walk through the legend or groups.
  4. Put one number into a sentence.
  5. Share the takeaway.

Before the case · Why the formula matters

Bad example

You can't present every chart. If a chart is too busy the creator didn't spend enough time on it.

Under Armour — Everything We Could Possibly Measure

Too many metrics · too many scales · no single number · no clear takeaway

$6B $5B $4B $3B $2B $1B 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% promo spiral first loss SEC inquiry Revenue Growth % Gross margin Inventory North America International Net income discount channel margin falls? sales pulled forward? is this revenue? or a percent? 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Legend: revenue, growth rate, gross margin, inventory, North America, international, net income, events, and management actions

This chart resembles the same Under Armour story, but it is not ready to present. Revenue, growth rate, gross margin, inventory, North America, international, and net income are all crammed onto two axes with competing annotations, and there is no single number the audience can hold onto.

Do not judge your presentation ability by a slide like this. No one can present it clearly because the slide does not give the presenter a path. We are going to tell the same story in a simpler manner: one chart, one number, one takeaway at a time.

Practice Case · Under Armour 2015–2019

The story we will use for practice

To practice the formula, we need a story with real charts and a clear narrative. We will use Under Armour from 2015 to 2019.

For years, Under Armour had the best headline in retail. Revenue grew more than twenty percent a year, every year, and crossed five billion dollars in 2018. The founder was on magazine covers and the stock was a market darling. If you only looked at the top line, the company was winning.

The top line was the wrong place to look. To keep that number climbing, Under Armour leaned harder on discounts and the off-price channel — outlets, clearance, third-party discounters. That kept revenue growing but it quietly crushed the profit on each sale. At the same time, product piled up in warehouses faster than it sold, and the part of the business doing the growing was no longer the core. The headline said “still growing.” It did not say “growing on borrowed, lower-quality sales.”

Under Armour's growth stalled, and in late 2019 it disclosed that regulators were investigating its accounting; it later settled after pulling forward $408 million in sales to keep the streak alive. The four charts below give us enough story to practice with. The chart type changes. The delivery method does not.

Chart 1 of 4 · Bar chart

Slide takeaway

Revenue grew more than twenty percent a year and crossed five billion dollars. The headline looked great.

Under Armour — Annual Net Revenue

Fiscal year · USD billions · 2014–2019

$6B $4B $2B $0 $3.1B 2014 $4.0B 2015 $4.8B 2016 $5.0B 2017 $5.2B 2018 $5.3B 2019 +20% a year crossed $5B

Source: Under Armour 10-K filings and earnings releases. Navy bars = the years revenue grew more than 20%. Red bars = the years growth stalled.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, we have fiscal years, from 2014 through 2019. Under Armour's fiscal year is the calendar year."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have annual net revenue, in billions of dollars."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "Each bar is one year of revenue. The navy bars are the boom years, when revenue grew more than twenty percent. The red bars are the years that growth stalled."
  4. Put one number in sentence "In 2018, revenue passed five billion dollars for the first time — $5.19 billion, up from $3.08 billion in 2014."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that the headline number looked great for years. Revenue went up every single year, and that is the number everyone watched."

Notice the order

The presenter does not start with the whole business story. They follow the same five-part order every time: explain the horizontal axis, explain the vertical axis, walk through the legend or groups, put one number into a sentence, share the takeaway. And if the number matters, put it on the slide so the audience does not have to do the math.

Chart 2 of 4 · Scatter plot

Slide takeaway

Every year the top line grew fast, the margin fell. The growth was being bought with discounts.

Under Armour — Revenue Growth vs. Gross Margin

Each dot is one year · revenue growth % across · gross margin % up · 2014–2019

50% 48% 46% 44% 0% 10% 20% 30% good corner: grow fast, keep margin 2019 2017 2018 2016 2015 2014 lowest margin, 45.1%

Source: Under Armour 10-K filings. Both axes are percentages, not time — each dot is one fiscal year placed by its growth rate and its gross margin.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, we have revenue growth for that year, as a percent. This is the part to slow down on — the horizontal axis is not time. Dots farther to the right grew faster."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have gross margin, also as a percent. Gross margin is what's left from the sale price after you subtract what it cost to make and ship the product — so a lower margin means the company kept less of each dollar. Dots higher up kept more."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "Each dot is one year, and the label next to it is the year. The good corner is up and to the right: growing fast and keeping a lot of each dollar. Watch where the fast-growth years actually land. The 2017 dot, in red, is the lowest on margin."
  4. Put one number in sentence "From 2014 to 2017, gross margin fell from 48.9% to 45.1% — lower every single year, even as revenue kept climbing."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that the years of fast growth were also the years margin fell. Under Armour was buying its growth with discounts, and the top line never showed it."

Chart 3 of 4 · Stacked bar

Slide takeaway

The core stopped growing. The number was being carried by a smaller, lower-margin international business.

Under Armour — Revenue by Region

Net revenue · USD billions · North America vs. International · 2016–2019

North America (core) International
$6B $4B $2B $0 $4.8B 2016 $5.0B 2017 $5.2B 2018 $5.3B 2019 core peaks, then falls all the growth

Source: Under Armour 10-K segment notes. North America and International are reported figures (International folds in the small Connected Fitness line so the two pieces sum to the reported total).

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, we have fiscal years, from 2016 through 2019."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have net revenue in billions of dollars. The full height of each bar is that year's total revenue."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "Each bar is split into two pieces. The navy piece is North America — the core, the home market. The grey piece is International. Because the pieces stack, the whole bar is the total, and you read each piece by how thick it is. Watch the navy piece peak and then shrink while the grey piece climbs."
  4. Put one number in sentence "North America peaked at $4.09 billion in 2017, then fell three straight years to $3.66 billion in 2019 — yet total revenue still rose, because International grew every year."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that the growth everyone celebrated was not coming from the core. The home market had peaked and was shrinking, and a smaller, lower-margin international business was carrying the number."

Chart 4 of 4 · Grouped bar

Slide takeaway

Over the same four years, Adidas's margin climbed every year while Under Armour's stayed stuck. This was not the market.

Gross Margin — Under Armour vs. Adidas

Gross margin % · by fiscal year · 2016–2019

Under Armour Adidas
50% 40% 20% 0% 46.5 48.6 2016 45.1 50.4 2017 45.1 51.8 2018 47.3 52.0 2019 gap widens to ~5 pts

Source: company filings (Macrotrends). Each pair of bars is one year. Nike held in the mid-40s over the same window; Adidas is shown because its margin rose every year.

Presentation script using the five-step formula

  1. Explain horizontal axis "On the horizontal axis, we have fiscal years, from 2016 through 2019."
  2. Explain vertical axis "On the vertical axis, we have gross margin as a percent — again, the share of each sales dollar the company keeps after the cost of making and shipping the product."
  3. Walk through legend/groups "There are two bars in each year. The navy bar is Under Armour. The red bar is Adidas. They are grouped together so you can compare them year by year, and the gap between them gets wider as you move right."
  4. Put one number in sentence "In 2019, Adidas's gross margin was 52.0% while Under Armour's was 47.3% — a gap of almost five percentage points, up from about two points in 2016."
  5. Share takeaway "The takeaway is that the whole category was not discounting. Adidas grew and lifted its margin every year over the same stretch. Under Armour's margin problem was its own."

What you just practiced

The chart type changed. The approach to presenting them didn't.

The lesson: do not make the audience decode the chart alone. A bar chart, a scatter plot, a stacked bar, and a grouped bar all read the same way: explain the horizontal axis, explain the vertical axis, walk through the legend or groups, put one number into a sentence, share the takeaway. The chart type tells you what to draw. The formula tells you what to say.