A simple understanding of negative percentage

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I am currently working on a financial reporting setup and wondering about some percentages. If you have a result of a column with a margin of -16%, and the next period is -64%, is it correct to use -285% decrease? I have looked around searching for a valid explanation, but seem to get some vague answers. The theory that something cant decrease more than 100% doesn't seem usable when i have a situation with negative results. Is there any other way i can phrase it than to use the negative 285%? I used the absolute formula in excel.