Working Capital Analysis of Wal-Mart Essay


3)Working Capital
: Working Capital is considering what the best way would be in terms of a management for short-term resources and obligations. The concept of this decision focuses on if it is possible to maintain enough capital for payments of its bills including and extra money earned as interest. Current assets and current liabilities are considered as the part of this decision.

The purpose of this business report is to gain familiarity with Wal-Mart and to learn about the different aspects that make Wal-Mart a successful company. This report gives an in-depth analysis of the company history, services and products provided, the company philosophy, business methods, organizational structure, and financial and competitive analysis.

In 2011, Walmart's inventory turnover was 11.62 and the industry average was 10.4(stock-analysis). It's fixed asset turnover was 3.88 and the industry average was 3.56, and it's total asset turnover was 2.34 and the industry average was 1.56(Stock-analysis). The values calculated for all three ratios mentioned all resulted in substantially different values in a positive way (Appendix B). Historically the values of each ratio have maintained relatively constant, which in this case is not a weakness. Asset management is a strength for Walmart, which ultimately means that they are maintaining their assets in the correct manner in order to have an efficient way of business.

An organization’s current ratio shows how liquid the assets of the agency are by comparison to the short term debts that the agency must pay to continue its operations. This ratio is calculated by taking the assets that can be converted to cash within a year (current assets) and dividing it by the liabilities that are either currently due or will become due within a year (current liabilities). The current ratio, ideally, should be at

For the final project of managing finance Wal-Mart Stores Inc is chosen as the discussion target. Being one of the grocery retail shop leaders in the world, Wal-Mart (WM) operates business with 10,000 retail units in 27 countries with about USD444 million of sales in 2012 (Wal-Mart homepage 2012).

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.

A more tell tale sign is the quick ratio, or acid test, which has increased year after year. Debt to total assets has decreased over 5% since 2001, indicating less financing of current and long term debt and more company assets. Their cash debt coverage far surpasses the ideal 20%, indicating a high level of solvency with sufficient funds and assets to satisfy all debtors. Asset turnover has more or less maintained at right around 1.6, signifying a turnover rate of just less than 180 times per year.

Working capital is the key to a successful business. It is like their blood flow and the manager’s job is to help keep it flowing. Under the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles working capital is simply the difference between a company’s Current Assets, which are cash, inventory, accounts receivable and prepaid items, and Current Liabilities, accounts payable and accrued expenses.

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.

Examine the concepts of working capital and the financial analysis of a company’s working capital position.

Return on Total Assets was 4.43% which is below five percent. That indicates that the company is not accurately converting its assets into profit. The total for Return on Stockholders’ Equity was 8.89%, however financial analysts prefer ROE to range between 15-20 %. The company’s low ROE indicates that the company is not generating profit with new investments. Lastly, Debt-to-Equity ratio for the company was 1.01 which indicates that investors and creditors are equally sharing assets. In the view of creditors, they see a high ratio as a risk factor because it can indicate that investors are not investing due to the company’s overall performance. The totals of these three ratios demonstrate that the company’s financial state is not as healthy as it should be.

Overall regards to liquidity ratios, the higher the number the better; however, a too high also indicates that the firms were not using their resources to their full potential. Current ratio of 1.0 or greater shows that a company can pay its current liabilities with its current assets. JWN’s ratio increased from 2.06 in 2007 to 2.57 in 2010, and slightly decreased to 2.16 in 2011. JWN’s cash ratio increased significantly from 22% in 2007 to 80% in 2010. JWN has a cash ratio of 73% in 2011, which is useful to creditors when deciding how much debt they would be willing to extend to JWN. In addition, JWN also has moderate CFO ratio of 46%, indicating the companies’ ability to pay off their short term liabilities with their operating cash

Also, according to its leverage ratios, the company’s debts are not only very high, but are also increasing. Its decreasing TIE ratio indicates that its capability to pay interests is decreasing. The company’s efficiency ratios indicate that despite the fact that its fixed assets are increasingly being utilized to generate sales during the years 1990-1991 as indicated by its increasing fixed asset turnover ratio, the decreasing total assets turnover indicate that overall the company’s total assets are not efficiently being put to use. Thus, as a whole its asset management is becoming less efficient. Last but not the least, based on its profitability ratios, the company’s ability to make profit is decreasing.

The organization that I have chosen for the purpose of this corporate finance analysis is Wal-Mart. As is well known, Wal-Mart is the global market leader of

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