Rank Commercial Relationships by Dollars, Revenue or Cost Share
Published August 2, 2026
Altsets
Research by Altsets Research
A four-edge comparison shows how the same relationships change rank under monetary size, customer concentration and procurement exposure.
Dataset reference:Altsets supply chain relationships dataset covers 115k+ entities, 550k+ relationships, and history since 2006 across the full dataset; individual analyses use a narrower scope.
Key findings
- Across four displayed edges, dollar size and supplier revenue share select different top relationships: SK hynix–Apple and LG Energy Solution–Tesla.
- Lam–Micron ranks first on customer cost share in this four-edge comparison despite ranking third by relationship size.
- Ranking reversals are useful evidence that a screen needs a declared financial objective, rather than a universal importance score.
The “largest relationship” depends on what the researcher is trying to measure. In four Altsets examples, sorting by dollars puts SK hynix–Apple first. Sorting by supplier revenue concentration puts LG Energy Solution–Tesla first. Sorting by the customer's cost share puts Lam Research–Micron first.
That is a consequential ranking reversal. A dollar-based event screen would allocate its first research hour differently from a customer-concentration screen, even though both use exactly the same edges.
The ranking changes before any data changes
| Relationship | Relationship Size | Supplier Revenue % | Customer Cost % |
|---|---|---|---|
| SK hynix → Apple | $6.2 billion | 8.75% | 1.76% |
| LG Energy Solution → Tesla | $3.2 billion | 19.03% | 3.41% |
| Lam Research → Micron | $1.2 billion | 5.61% | 5.52% |
| KLA → Micron | $693 million | 4.59% | 2.84% |
These are the dated relationship estimates used in the respective company articles, not a synchronized census of the market. The comparison isolates metric choice across this selected set.
| Relationship | Rank by dollars | Rank by supplier revenue share | Rank by customer cost share |
|---|---|---|---|
| SK hynix → Apple | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| LG Energy Solution → Tesla | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Lam Research → Micron | 3 | 3 | 1 |
| KLA → Micron | 4 | 4 | 3 |
SK hynix–Apple moves from first to last when the question changes from commercial scale to procurement share. Lam–Micron moves from third to first. The exercise adds no new relationship data; it shows what the data-selection rule does to a decision.
Choose the denominator before screening securities
For a supplier revenue forecast, the customer share is the relevant starting coefficient. A 10% change in customer-linked sales applied to a 19.03% revenue share contributes 1.903 percentage points to total revenue growth under fixed other sales.
For a customer's input-cost scenario, use the cost share instead. A 10% increase in the price of an input representing 5.52% of starting costs adds 0.552% to total costs if quantities and other costs are unchanged. Neither calculation forecasts stock returns.
Dollar size serves a third purpose: identifying the absolute commercial scale of a connection. It is useful for sizing a market or examining transaction magnitude, provided currencies and observation periods are compatible. It does not normalize for the company whose financial statement is exposed.
I would avoid a composite score that averages these three measures. It hides the financial question and can produce a rank that has no interpretable unit. Separate rankings let an analyst disagree with a result for a concrete reason.
Quant features should retain the direction
A stock model can include revenue concentration and procurement concentration as separate features. Combining them prematurely sacrifices a testable distinction: customer demand news should relate more directly to the first, while supplier input-cost news should relate more directly to the second.
The same principle applies to normalization. A cross-sectional percentile in revenue exposure is still a supplier-side feature; making it dimensionless does not make it equivalent to a cost-share percentile. Missing values should remain missing or enter a documented missingness treatment rather than receiving a zero rank.
The Altsets methodology supplies formal definitions. For worked financial effects, see LG Energy Solution's revenue offset requirement and KLA's Micron spending sensitivity.
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Cite this research
Altsets Research. "Rank Commercial Relationships by Dollars, Revenue or Cost Share." Published August 2, 2026. https://www.altsets.com/research/relationship-size-vs-relative-exposure