Why do I always see people using lowercase “mm” to abbreviate million? That does ..

I know I have seen jobs posted that pay $50K, and K is meant to stand in for a thousand. And you would be correct, thanks to the Greeks. K comes from the Greek word kilo which means a thousand.

• In the US banking industry, using M as an abbreviation for thousand and MM for a million is standard .
• In the oil and gas industry, the prefix “M” stands for “one thousand.” Thus, “MM” is “M multiplied by M,” or one million.
• I have a good feeling about all of this, and I’m sure you’ll do the right thing here.It’s not going to pass the 55M threshold.
• Using M for million in that industry could be misleading.

We’ll explain the correct abbreviation for “million” in this article. Outside of finance and accounting, it is common to find the value of a thousand abbreviated as , the value of a million abbreviated as , and the value of a billion abbreviated as . Typically we think of a million being abbreviated as . Yet, often in finance and accounting, we find that this abbreviation deviates from the cultural norm that permeates most industries. One thing to consider is that when writing about large amounts of money, the words “million” or “billion” are often left out altogether, as are superfluous zeroes. It’s then up to the reader to note the context, with the document stating the place value once at the beginning and not again. The word “million” is defined as the number 1,000,000.

Company

The reader can easily understand the complex number shown in millions through presentations. Earnings Per ShareEarnings Per Share is a key financial metric that investors use to assess a company’s performance and profitability before investing. It is calculated by dividing total earnings or total net income by the total number of outstanding shares. The higher the earnings per share , the more profitable the company is. That being said, it really messes up your reading comprehension on financial headlines as everything looks like small potatoes. Those who can’t, post threads about how to do it on WSO. Professionalleadershipinstitute.com needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding.

Some sources say this abbreviation originated with Standard Oil Co. — the first oil giant in the United States, founded in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller. They used blue barrels to store and transport oil, thus BBL originated as a symbol for “blue barrel”. The abbreviation BBL refers to a barrel of crude oil. In the oil industry, an oil barrel is 42 US gallons. Beyond where I opined that two posted answers are the best ones, I’m not aware of any single statement which I’ve posted that can be refuted with facts. Of course there is a very specific question at the start of the thread. Of course there is much noise arround it because there is no one universal standard that is universally used.

List & Abbreviations for Months: List of Months and Abbreviations

As we dig in, one consistent thing you’ll notice is the prefix “mil” which means thousand or thousandth. The meaning of the word “million” is common to the short scale and long what is mm scale numbering systems, unlike the larger numbers, which have different names in the two systems. The statements I’ve posted are irrefutably true and are supported by facts .

The word “million” can be paired with the suffix “-aire” to form the word millionaire which indicates an individual with a million or more dollars. The Latin numeral MM is frequently used to designate that the units used in presenting information (financial and non-financial) are in millions. The example below shows how figures can be portrayed in millions. In the oil and gas industry, the prefix https://www.bookstime.com/ “M” stands for “one thousand.” Thus, “MM” is “M multiplied by M,” or one million. Barrels per day may also need to be converted to a different scale of gallons per minute or GPM. This is a fluid flow rate of production rather than a measure of volume like BBL. This measurement is just as common but looks at production differently depending on what you need to learn from the information.

$m or $mm when abbreviating Million

These financial statements usually run into the hundreds of millions or billions for publicly traded companies. I worked for a large American chemical company, and they also used this confusing terminology. I thought we abandoned roman numerals for industry and commerce once the zero had been invented in India. Apart from historical uses (e.g. clocks, classical dating), we should eliminate any roman numeral remnants from our thinking, now that we have adopted in 1963 I think the SI system / units. Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling. As we mix our traditions, it sometimes becomes difficult to know what someone intends to convey expressing thousands or millions in an abbreviation.

• To summarize, our modern numerical system is the same as the Hindu-Arabic numerical system.
• In oil and gas, m is used for thousands and mm is for millions.
• For example, within financial statements, the industry-standard abbreviation is M for a thousand, while in everyday life, the abbreviation of K for a thousand is usually the acceptable one.
• To measure oil production, you may see many different abbreviations (BPD, BOPD, BBL/D, BPD, BP, or B/D) which all represent “barrels of oil per day.”
• Of course there is much noise arround it because there is no one universal standard that is universally used.
• I just happen to google it since I saw it on a letter the VP asked me to proof.

The Greeks would likewise show million as M, short for Mega. So if we stay consistent with the Greek abbreviations, then billion would be shown as a letter G . Think of your computer expressing bytes of memory as kilobyte, megabyte, or gigabyte. However, when it comes to billion, we don’t really see G or MMM as the abbreviation for billion. We are more likely to see a headline that reads the government spent $60B on a new project. B for billion isn’t Greek or Roman; it is just the first letter of the word billion. To measure oil production, you may see many different abbreviations (BPD, BOPD, BBL/D, BPD, BP, or B/D) which all represent “barrels of oil per day.”