At Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate, Carly Fiorina defended her record as C.E.O. of Hewlett-Packard. She was fired in 2005, and Donald Trump, among others, has criticized her performance.

The early 2000s were a tough time for the tech industry, she said, and yet, “despite those difficult times, we doubled the size of the company, we quadrupled its topline growth rate, we quadrupled its cash flow, we tripled its rate of innovation.”

The key undermining word in that statement is “topline.”

A company’s top line is its revenue — how much money it takes in, before expenses. What shareholders really care about is the bottom line, or profit. As Mr. Trump correctly pointed out on Wednesday, Mrs. Fiorina’s strategy to quickly grow H.P.’s top line was to buy another large company, Compaq Computer. That deal was widely criticized at the time because it got H.P. a big increase in sales but little profit. Revenue from personal computers barely exceeded the company’s cost to make and sell them.