When a waterfall earns its place, and when it is theatre
14 July 2026 · Giorgi Kapanadze
A waterfall is useful when the P&L actually moved in named steps. It is theatre when every step is ‘other’.
Someone in almost every first sitting asks for a waterfall. They have seen one in another company’s pack. They would like one here.
A waterfall earns its place when the month moved for named reasons: volume, price, mix, a one-off, a rate. If finance can stand by those names, we draw the steps and we print them at a size a person at the far end of the table can read.
It is theatre when the middle steps are “other” and “adjustments.” Then the waterfall is a long way of saying the number changed. A pair of bars would have done, and would have left room for the sentence the chair actually needs.
We also refuse 3-D steps and rounded blobs that hide the baseline. A board page is a document. It is not a poster for the lobby on Rustaveli.
If the sitting is a one-off — a covenant, a restatement — a single waterfall on a nearly empty page can be the whole pack. That is a different job from the monthly operating set, and we quote it that way. Do not ask us to wedge that page into the eight-page monthly file “so it is all in one place.” It will not be read.