Liquidity Ratios Are Defined As A Class Of Financial Metrics

Liquidity ratios measure the capability of a business to cover expenses and meet its current and long-term responsibility. These ratios are imperative in order to keep the business alive. Lending institutions are typically unwilling to loan money to a business that finds itself in a cash flow jam, because that is often a sign of poor management. The liquidity is measured with 3 different ratios; current ratio, turnover – of – cash ratio and debt- to equity ratio.

Total asset turnover : This ratio measures the efficiency of a company’s use of its assets

2. Asset management ratios: They can also be called activity ratios and they keep track of how an organization is using their assets to generate net income.

The decline of inventory turnover presents the incresed possibility of inventory obsolescence which is likely to be assessed as higher business risk. In debts to equity part, the ratio in current year is much higher than that of preceeding year, which means the extent of use of debt in financing company is much higher than before. Pinnacle has used most of its borrowing capacity and has little cushion for addional debt.This action brought high business risk to Pinnacle. In addition, Pinnacle puchase more inventory in current year that that of preceeding year, and net sales are increasing also compared previous year. However, the net income is decreased significantly. These changes show expenses (maybe direct or indirect) have increased dramaticly. The company uses more expensive materials and labors to manufacure and sell products.

This ratio indicates a company’s liquidity. It depicts how many dollars of current assets exist for every dollar in current liabilities. The ratio is the higher, the better. Home Depot and Lowe’s has increasing current ratio while Home Depot has a slightly higher one.

The inventory turnover ratio "measures the number of times on average the inventory sold during the period; computed by dividing cost of goods sold by the average inventory during the period" (Kimmel et al, 2007, p. 292). This indicates how quickly a company sells its goods and a high ratio "suggests that management is reducing the amount of inventory on hand, relative to sales" (Kimmel et al, 2007, p. 287).

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.

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.

The liquidity ratios of the firm are slightly below the industry averages. This is due to inventory and accounts receivable making up a significantly larger portion of the current assets than cash and marketable securities. This may be indicative of a problem with inventory management and/or collection on accounts.

Liquidity ratios measure the short term ability of a company to pay its obligations and meet their needs for maintaining cash. According to Cagle, Campbell & Jones (2013), “A good assessment of a company’s liquidity is important because a decline in liquidity leads to a greater risk of bankruptcy” (p. 44). Creditors, investors and analysts alike are all interested in a company’s liquidity. After computing liquidity

Liquidity ratios measure the ability of a firm to meet its short-term obligations. A company that is not able

A third activity ratio is the inventory turnover ratio, which indicates the effectiveness with which the company is employing inventory. Since inventory is recorded on the balance sheet at cost (not at its sales value), it is advisable to use cost of goods sold as the measure of activity. The inventory turnover figure is calculated by dividing cost of goods sold by inventory:

These ratios help company in determining its capability to pay short-term debts. Liquidity ratios inform about, how quickly a firm can obtain cash by liquidating its current assets in order to pay its liabilities. General liquidity ratios are: current ratio and quick ratio. Current ration can be obtain by dividing company’s current assets by its’ current liabilities. Generally a current ratio of two is considered as good (Cleverley et al., 2011). Quick ratio also known as acid test determines company’s liabilities that need to be fulfilled on urgent basis. Quick ratio can be obtained by dividing quick assets by current liabilities. Quick ratio is considered as stricter because it excludes inventories from current assets. Generally a quick ratio of 1:1 is considered as good for the company. Higher quick

Another ratio we will look at is total asset turnover rate. Total asset turnover rate measures how efficiently a company uses its assets to generate sales. In 2001 the total asset turnover rate was 1.079 and in 2000 it was 1.193. The fixed asset turnover ratio is similar to the total asset turnover ratio but includes only fixed assets. The fixed asset turnover rate measures the capacity utilization and the quality of fixed assets and was 3.771 for 2001 and 3.854 for 2000.

Firms and Companies include ‘Ratios’ in their external report to which it can be referred as ‘highlights’. Only with the help of ratios the financial statements are meaningful. It is therefore, not surprising that ratio analysis feature are prominently in the literature on financial management. According to Mcleary (1992) ratio means “an expression of a relationship between any two figures or groups of figures in the financial statements of an undertaking”.