Trends Analysis in Working Capital Management

Even though most of these expenses are not of big magnitude their value can add up and affect the company’s finances. Some of these items are accrued time for employees, bonuses, benefits, utilities, improvements and taxes. Some additional sources of working capital include; cash reserves, profits, equity loans, line of credit, and long term loans.

Analyze the fundamental differences between the working capital structures and components for each chosen company, and speculate upon the main reasons why such differences exist.

The Working Capital measures both the company’s effectiveness and it’s immediate financial health. The working capital ration is calculated by subtracting the current assets from the current liabilities. The Working Capital for my company is $-17,210. A positive working capital means that the company will be able to pay its short-term liabilities. A negative working capital means a company can not pay its short-term liabilities.

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

Alan Litchman and Laura B. Trust, Co-Presidents of Finagle a Bagel, own a bagel business in Boston (Parrino, Kidwell, Bates, 2012). Alan and Laura met in business school and after gaining business experience in other industries they purchased the bagel business with the intent of growing it as much as possible. They have two primary target markets: 1) retail stores and 2) wholesale accounts with large institutions. In this paper, we will briefly discuss a few of the strategies they used to manage their working capital.

Working Capital is again in the red zone, dropping more than 75% from FY09 to FY10. However, the historic trend for the company is not very impressive, with working capital dropping as low as -$3 billion. The Operating Cash Flow Ratio is somewhat more reassuring, standing at 18.13 in FY10 from 14.67 a year earlier. This implies that for every dollar of current liability, the operations are providing $18 of revenue to cover the expense. However, operations are not primarily meant to cover just short term obligations, but also long term costs. Thus it cannot be justified that operations are very adequate to meet ST obligations.

Working capital is defined as the current assets minus the current liabilities (Investopedia, 2012). As of the end of the 2003 fiscal year, Superior Living had $41,950 in working capital. This is a decrease of $150 from last year's working capital of $42,100. The working capital in FY 2001 was $39,500. The primary reason for the decline in the total amount of working capital appears to be that on the liabilities side, accounts payable increased 11.8%, and "other current liabilities" increased 19%. The increase in the current liabilities was greater than the increase in the current assets. Most current asset line items increased between 5-7% for the year.

When viewing the numbers for fixed asset ratio, it can be said that the management department is not using their assets to its fullest capabilities. Fixed asset ration is .4 below average of the industry, along with the capital ratio. Since the total asset management ratio, is somewhat higher than average, it can be viewed that they are using the assets correctly. Sales to working capital ratio and capital intensity ratio both show that management is running the firm great, and that the assets are being used to their

To determine the working capital strategy Boeing, Co. should shift to, it is important to determine which strategy they have been using for the last five years. The decrease from 28.55% to 6.63% in five years seems to resemble an aggressive approach. To know for sure lets determine the amount of financial leverage the firm is using. This can be done using financial leverage ratios. According to Emery, Finnerty, and Stowe, the most commonly used ratios are the debt ratio, debt/equity ratio, and the equity multiplier (2007, p. 64). The debt ratio is simply: TOTAL DEBT/TOTAL ASSETS = DEBT RATIO PERCENTAGE. These ratios are different representations of the same information, and if anyone of them is known the other two can be determined

This paper evaluates the key financial challenges facing organizations in Risk Management, Managing International Acquisitions, and Managing Working Capital simulations. Secondly, an evaluation of Southwest Airlines (SWA) management of working capital and the optimal financial strategies employed is presented. Also evaluated are the potential improvements in financial performance along with long-term and short-term strategies. Lastly, considered in this paper is whether a merger or acquisition would affect SWA’s employed strategic outlook.

Analysing the historical values of the operating margins from the Income Statement, we forecast values for the 2007-2009 period. The executives of BKI expect the firm to achieve operating margins at least as high as the historical ones. Thus, we took averages and slightly adjusted them toward higher values. Since the declining tendency in the last three years was cause by integration costs and inventory write-downs associated with acquisitions, which already have been completed. To the EBIT, estimated by using those margins, subtract the taxes, Capex, adjust for Depreciation, Amortization and change in Working capital. The capital expenditures were just over $10m on average per year. The company is expecting the Capex remain modest. Thus, we assumed a Capex of $10m for the next three years. We estimated Net Working Capital by using the average ratio of NWC/Net income of the last three years.

As a shrewd financial analyst you observe that the net working capital of the firm has typically been about 20% of the annual revenues. How would you incorporate this observation into the analysis?

·         CEO has decided to use the capital committed to Bernoulli to boost the ailing performance of other parts of the firm.

Working capital is the amount that a company’s current assets exceeds its current liabilities and is a measure of the company’s ability to pay its debts and liabilities if they were to all become due in the near future. Assets and liabilities are considered “current” if the asset is able to be converted into cash within one year and if the liability must be paid within one year (Bagul, 2014). Both Google (now Alphabet) and Microsoft hold working capital in sums that significantly exceed $50 million dollars, $61 million and $74 million respectively. These large sums are on account of the fact that both companies hold higher than normal levels of cash and investments (securities) when compared to most large corporations. While there is no set goal for how much working capital a company should hold, these numbers provide us with two clear conclusions. First, neither Google nor Microsoft currently have any risk of not being able to pay their debts on the short-term horizon because they have way more than enough current assets to cover even the most dramatic call of their debts. On the other hand, this high amount of working capital shows that the company could be investing its assets in a more efficient manner, rather than allowing them to sit unutilized.

In this paper I’ll analyze the fundamental differences between the working capital structures and components for Google and Oracle, and speculate upon the main reasons why such differences exist; how each company could improve its working capital positions. As a Wall Street Analyst who has to recommend one of the companies as an investment to a company’s clients; based solely on that company’s working capital; as an Investment Banker who has to recommend loaning a substantial amount of capital to one company based solely on that company’s working capital.