Butler Lumber Company Essay

ACC/291 March 25,2012   Liquidity Ratios Current Ratio: Current Assets/Current Liabilities 2005 $14,555,092/ $6,974,752= 2.09:1 2004 $14,643,456/ $6,029,696=2.43:1 Acid Test Ratio: Cash+ Short-Term Investments + Receivables (Net)/ Current Liabilities 2005 $305,563 + $283,583 +$6,133,663/ $6,974,752= .96:1 2004 $357,216 + $133,504 + $5,775,104/ $6,029,696=1.04:1 Receivables Turnover: Net Credit Sales/ Average Net Receivables 2005 $50,823,685/ ($6,133,663 + 5,775,104/2) $50,823,685/ $5,954,384= 8.54 times 2004 $46,044,288/($5,775,104+6,569,344/2) $46,044,288/ $6,172,224=7,46 times Inventory Turnover: Cost of Goods Sold/ Average Inventory 2005 $42,037,624/ ($7,850,970+$7,854,112/2) $42,037,624/$7,852,541=5.35 times

The lumber was ordered, purchased and received on December 31. It is being held for a future sale as of the year end date. The terms of purchase are FOB destination.

First of which, is the current ratio. It has been rapidly declining since 2000. To me this indicates that there is a liquidity issue. Each year their trade debt increase exceeds the increase of net income for the company. As a result, the working capital has taken a nosedive from $58,650 in 2002 to only $5,466 in 2003.

The Lawsons’ efficiency ratios are another section the bank will find troubling. The company’s age of payables has nearly tripled over the last four years. This can be detrimental to the company’s image and reliability including their reliability toward the bank if granted the loan. Along with increasing age of payables is increasing age of receivables and age of inventory. Indicating that Mr. Mackay is taking longer to collect his receivables and that he has purchased too much inventory. Too much inventory results can result in further issues

Increase in current liabilities Substantial increase in current liabilities weakened the company’s liquidity position. Its current liabilities were US$2,063.94 million at the end of FY2010, a 48.09% increase compared to the previous year. However, its current assets recorded a marginal increase of 25.07% - from US$1,770.02 million at the end of FY2009 to US$2,213.72 million at the end of FY2010. Following this, the company’s current ratio declined from 1.27 at the end of the FY2009 to 1.07 at the end of FY2010. A lower current ratio indicates that the company is in a weak financial position, and it may find it difficult to meet its day-to-day obligations.

2. Forecast the firm’s financial statements for 2002 and 2003. What will be the external financing requirements of the firm in those years? Can the firm repay its loan within a reasonable period? In order to forecast the financial statements of 2002 and 2003, the following assumptions need to be made. The growth of sales is 15%, same as 2001, which is estimated by managers. The rate of production costs and expenses per sales is constant to 50%. Administration and selling expenses is the average of last 4 years. The depreciation is $7.8 million per year, which is calculated by $54.6 million divided by 7 years. Tax rate is 24.5%, which is provided. The dividend is $2 million per year only when the company makes profits. Therefore, we assume that there will be no dividend in 2003. Gross PPE will be $27.3 million (54.6/2) per year. We also assume there is no more long term debt, because any funds need in the case are short term debt, it keeps at $18.2 million. According to the forecast, Star River needs external financing approximately $94 million and $107 million in 2002 and 2003, respectively. In order to analysis if the company can repay the debt, we need to know the interest coverage ratio, current ratio and D/E ratio. The interest coverage ratios through the forecast were 1.23 and 0.87 respectively, which is the danger signal to the managers, because in 2003, the profits even not

CCC’s build-to-order custom manufactures do not have to be sold through big-box stores in order to be successful. The company is able to underprice their replacement antique style doors and still be profitable even while working with lower volumes; thus, they are using a differentiation strategy. However, recently it has been brought to our attention that the company is facing multiple internal and external issues. They have selected our team of HR managers to solve the underlying problems.

The true variable costs to Beauregard Textiles include the Direct Labor, Material, Material Spoilage, and Direct Department Expense. By excluding those expenses not related to the production of T-30, we can calculate the contribution margin for Beauregard using unit sales price and unit variable cost. Contribution margin is a measurement of the profitability of a product and is an excellent management tool to help determine whether to keep or drop certain aspects of the business. A positive contribution margin means that the company should produce the product, a negative contribution margin means the company is likely to suffer from every unit it produces.

Asset turnover has trended downward slightly from 1.46 in 1983 to 1.32 in 1986 due to a decline in inventory turnover (3.99 in 1983 and 3.16 in 1985). In addition, any AMT"s product sits in inventory 255 days before being sold (for 1985). The fixed asset turnover ration has trended upward (from 14.6 in 1983 to 17.1 in 1985) indicating low capital intensity.

On the other hand, the company has been growing constantly. In deed, according to the net income estimation for 2007 (see Table 7) the company increases its profits $25 thousand dollars more than the previous year. This is an evidence of how the company is been management and of its willing to grow year after year. Nevertheless, the first quarter of 2007 the working capital only has increased by $7 thousand dollars, which is the difference between the current assets and current liabilities but the importance of this is that according to the rotation on receivables and payable accounts, shown in Table 5 and 10, leads us to the conclusion that the company will have to pay its suppliers

Because they have faced cash shortage trouble. Their profitability has grown for 1993 ~ 1995 period, as we can see from their I/S (e.g. Sales and Net Income, etc.). However, as its business size grows, their A/R increased, which means that it is getting difficult to collect cash. On the other hand, A/P decreased for the same period, which means that the company paid cash for A/P, resulting in critical cash shortage. Furthermore, the A/P payment period is shorter than A/R collection periods, the company’s cash problem happens to be accelerated.

As given in the working capital for the year 2007 is $183,129 which compared to previous years has fallen drastically. This means that the financial health of the company is deteriorating and this will keep on happening until the company improves it working capital. In terms of Accounts Receivable, Inventory and/or Accounts Payable the age period is 157 days, 12 days and 57 days respectively. The best way to calculate this is to use ratios and for this purpose we will first look into the Days Sales in Inventory which is 365 / Inventory Turnover which is given as 12 days. This means that the company will receive their inventory 30.4 times in 365 days which is very good for the company’s cash flow and will thus benefit the bank as well.

The third ratio mirroring the company’s efficiency is the creditors’ days ratio, which measures, according to Atrill, the number of days in which the business pays its debts to suppliers. Britvic PLC’s financial statements recorded in 2009 a 20 days increase in the above mentioned ratio compared to the 2005-2008 average that had a value of 149 days. Therefore, Britvic PLC paid in 2009 its debts 169 days after the enclosure of the transactions. Taking into consideration the fact that Britvic PLC is operating in the soft drinks industry, which has a medium pace of generating cash, it may be stated that this ratio’s value is high enough to reflect that Britvic PLC is risking the creditors’ goodwill. On the other hand, the company paid its short-term liabilities in approximately four months after receiving the supplies

Although the company seems to be profitable, it has faced shortage of cash. It happened due to increase in Accounts Receivable as well as Inventories. On the other hand, Accounts Payable does not increase that rapidly and difficulties regarding cash collection become evident. Furthermore, the cash collection cycle becomes larger (59 days in year 2003, while more than 70 in year 2006).

We noticed the following financial health indicators in our forecast: Clarkson Lumber's ratio of total assets to sales is moving from a position in line with high profit outlets to low profit outlets at 37.7%. This is due to accounts receivable increasing to 14% of sales which is higher than the 13.7% experienced by low profit ratios. Also, inventory as a percentage of sales has steadily increased from 11.5% in 1993 to 13.5% in 1996.