Chapter Two Essay

Liquidity is important for any firm as it is an assessment of the ability to pay its' liabilities in the short term. There are two main liquidity ratios: the current and the quick ratio. The current ratios divides the current assets by the current liabilities to assess how many times the current assets can pay the current liabilities (Elliott and Elliott, 2011). Traditional ratios are usually in the region of 1.5, but this may vary depending on the industry and nature of the business (Elliott and Elliott, 2011). The current ratio is shown in table 1.

Example: If a company needed to pay off a debt quickly before an ending year they could cash in their liquid assets and to do so.

* An income statement is a report that contains information in regards to an organizations’ assets and financing in order to obtain those assets that is collected over a certain period of time

The liquidity ratios indicate a firm's ability to carry out enough revenue in order to cover its obligations and continue its operations.

37. A company is said to be liquid if it has sufficient cash to pay currently maturing debts.

Although the company’s liquidity ratios have dropped their ratios are still outperforming their RMA industry average by 15%. The decrease in the company’s liquidity ratios is the result of their current liabilities increasing 6.5% from fiscal year 2014 and their current assets only increasing 0.7% from fiscal year 2014. The company saw a decrease in cash and equivalents, accounts receivable, and income tax receivable in 2015. While also increasing accounts payable, accrued expenses, and deferred revenue and other liabilities. The combination of the movement in these accounts result in lower liquidity ratios for fiscal year 2015.

Liquidity represents a company’s ability to pay its short-term obligations. In the following schedule is the calculation of the ratios that are indicators of the liquidity position of a company.

Liquidity ratio. The firm’s liquidity shows a downward trend through time. The current ratio is decreasing because the growth in current liabilities outpaces the growth of current assets. The quick ratio is also declining but not as fast as the current ratio. From 1991 to 1992, it only decreased 0.35 units while the current ratio decreased 0.93 units. Looking at the common size balance sheet, we also see that the percentage of inventory is growing from 33% to 48% indicating Mark X could not convert its inventory to cash.

Liquidity In analyzing liquidity of the company, the current ratio is not very telling of a falling company. The company increased its ratio throughout the period of the income statement thus building upon its company assets and allowing for a 6-1 ratio of assets over its liabilities. This implies the company is still able to operate sufficiently even though it did not make its optimum current ratio of about 8-1. However, when one takes the inventory out of the equation with the quick ratio, the numbers show the true strength of short term liquidity. The numbers are still good, and do not indicate failure – but are

Liquidity is an important factor in financial statement analysis since an entity that can not meet its short term obligations may be forced into liquidation. The focus of this aspect of analysis is on working capital, or some computer of working capital.

The liquidity position of a company can be evaluated using several ratios which evaluate short-term assets and liabilities and a firm’s ability to settle short-term debts (Gibson, 2011). These ratios can provide insight into a firm’s ability to repay its debts in the short term (Gibson, 2011). In turn they suggest a firm’s capacity for debt-satisfying capabilities into the future (Gibson, 2011). This paper will use financial statement data as cited in Gibson (2011) from 3M Company (3M) to better understand liquidity measures to evaluate a firm’s total liquidity position. The following paper will focus on various liquidity calculations, their meaning, and their interpretation relative to 3M. Finally, an overall view of 3M’s liquidity

The financial statements included tend to combine cash and marketable securities into a category labeled “cash and cash equivalents”. If the cash ratio is recalculated using this value instead of simply cash than the ratio improves to 1.10, which shows much stronger liquidity capabilities.

Abbot laboratory uses a range of economic ratios to assess the health of the business in numerous capacities. These capacities embrace liquidity, solvency, profitableness, and market prospects. To start, Abbott’s level of liquidity ought to be analyzed to assess what quantity cash business has within the variety of cash and cash equivalents. Liquidity plays a crucial role within the financial and investment areas of business, and the way usually the corporate will expand through mergers and acquisitions. Liquidity is usually outlined because

Assets come in many forms, differentiating in their liquidity. Liquidity, by definition, is how easy an asset can be traded (Hertrich, 2015). Different assets have different abilities to be traded, cash being the easiest; hence cash is the most liquid asset. This causes price differentiation, where more liquid assets have higher price tags and lower trading costs (Hertrich, 2015). This makes more liquid assets more attractive for investors. When assets have low liquidity there are risks involved for investors because there is a chance that the asset cannot be turned into cash when needed. Liquidity risk calculates the difficulty of selling an asset in return for cash (Currie, 2011). Liquidity risk is associated with low liquidity; hence there is a negative relationship between liquidity and liquidity risk (Hertrich, 2015). This implies that the higher the liquidity risk of the asset, the less the possibility the asset can be traded.

The Purpose of Financial Statements The financial statements of a business are used to provide information about the status of the business, set performance targets and impose restrictions on the managers of the firm as well as provide an easier method for financial planning. The financial statements consist of the Profit and Loss Account, Balance Sheet and the Cash Flow Statement. There are four areas of information, which we can collect from a company's financial statements. They are: Ÿ