Growth Rate calculation in negative figures

[upaliwije]

Hi Friends

I have two negative figures in my data table for two years as shown below, I want to calculate the growth rate over previous years and I have written following expression.

        2018            2017       Growth

-127,252

-154,523

((sum({$<YEAR={'2018'}>}[Nos])/

fabs(sum({$<YEAR={'2017'}>}[Nos])))-1)*100

Results  -182.4%  But actually the growth rate should be 18%.

Pls help me to correct my formula to get correct results

[captain89]

That's impossible.

I tried and the result is right.

Is there a problem in your data model?

please see attachment

[MarcoWedel]

It's a negative percentage of a negative value resulting in a positive difference. So you have an alternative definition?

[Or]

The Wall Street Journal has an old guide to earnings reports that says this:

Net Income percent change is the change from the same period from a year ago. Percent change is not provided if either the latest period or the year-ago period contains a net loss [negative number]. On the digest page, if a company posts a profit in the latest period against a loss in the year-ago period, the percent change is represented as a “P”. Similarly, if a company posts a loss in the latest period against a profit in the year-ago period, the percent change is represented as a “L”. 

If you insist on calculating this - and you shouldn't, in my opinion - you can write an IF() statement to check which figure is bigger. If 2017 is smaller (that is, more negative) and both values are negative, you can multiply the result by -1 to get "positive growth". This is, however, not really correct... there is no positive growth here, merely reduction in losses.