Corporate unprofitability

Hi all - started playing a few days ago, though I dabbled in SC back around 2005 as well. Currently playing as Tyrinaria on WG. I'm trying to figure out what makes a corp profitable, because I inherited some profitable corps with my country, but the ones I'm starting are consistently losing money, and I don't want them to go bad.

In particular, my Santa Mona Cattle Feed corp is worrying me. I've dug through the forums to see what answers I can find, and I was already following most of the advice there. I did a GC booster to get it up to 200/200, it's producing a product with huge unmet demand, it's at 100% employment, it's got supplies, it has a stable sales contract for almost half its output to one of my other corps, my country's welfare index is pretty high, the quality of its inputs is >170 across the board...and it's still losing over 300M/month. What on earth is going on here? I'm worried that all my corps will perform equally badly, and that I don't know how to fix it.

Check your quality and effectivity upgrades. You might need to add some to your corps.

Did that - the corp in question is at 200 on both.

Can you post your world and country name so we can look at the corp in question? It might also have something to do with the fact that you retain some of the output for your own corps.

Did that in my OP. Tyrinaria on White Giant.

I see the problem. You're selling at 218. You should sell at 200 above current product quality. Example if your product is at 227 quality. The sale strategy should be 427 and have "follow product quality" checked, you'll be making much more, or use best price sale strategy. I personally set mine at best price, it's pretty much the same as manually setting it 200 above q. Your corp will auto sell it at the highest price on best price, depending on market surplus/shortage. BTW contracted products don't show up in your profits, but you do make money from contracts at current market price xquality. You can see that in products sold last month. Another thing is to set the buy price just above 100 like 101 with around +5 a month supplies not delivered or just below 100 like 95 +10 a month supplies not delivered. Now this is my opinion you do not need to copy this. It is not fact it's just what seems best for me. Also buying upgrades is a waste of gc in my opinion, especially in a new account. Although it's your decision. If you wait a few game years it'll reach max q&e, with auto upgrades which cost around 200m per upgrade( depending on market situation, this doesn't show in monthly costs ). Also new corps are never profitable for the first few months. One last tip I'll give is to buy supplies around your current quality upgrade level. Set new corps to buy low like 120-150q supplies and when upgraded around 180-210. Buying high q products is a waste if base q is low. Buying low q in a fully upgraded corp also lowers profit. I hope this info helps. These arent set in stone, its just my personal preference. Look at the ceo and country hall of fame/top 10 best players, copy their corp setups if you want a base guide.

Sell at 200 above current product quality? All my stuff should be selling for 450? Holy crap that's something I needed to know a long time ago LOL!

It doesn't actually sell that high, just the highest it can go above market. It wouldn't be fair if you could actually sell that high, then the world economy would become unstable with everything at insane prices.

I didn't jack it up quite that high, but I did Q+100 on my not-fully-upgraded corps, and Best Price on the fully-upgraded ones. And yeah, made a heck of a difference. Thanks Zen!