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外文资料翻译译文营运资本管理目前，随着我国市场经济的高速增长，以及逐步进行的金融改革，企业对于营运资本管理的重视程度与日俱增。
营运资本管理对于企业的经营发展具有至关重要的作用。
它是财务管理的组成部分，体现出了企业的财务管理和控制的水平，同时被认为是企业生存与发展的重要基础。
其重要性不言而喻。
主要描述了关于营运资本管理的相关理论和实践环境，简要说明了国内国外的在该领域所取得的成就。
而在此之后，正文部分从理论角度出发，首先简要说明了营运资本管理的相关定义。
由于我国在该领域的理论与实践经验不足，所以国内在该领域存在诸多问题，如流动资金缺乏，管理不力，运营效率低等。
本文就国内的现状以及存在的问题进行深入探讨，同时，分析其成因。
为了更具说服力，找到代表性的企业案例进行进一步的分析说明。
最后，提炼出解决企业营运资本管理问题的对策，为企业营运资本管理提供依据方法。
营运资金是企业资金结构中最具活力的部分，营运资金的运转效率很大程度上决定了企业的生存与发展。
从会计角度讲，营运资金是指某时点内企业的流动资产与流动负债的差额，构成要素包括现金、有价证券、应收账款、存货等。
这些要素的周转速度及资金占有余额直接影响着企业经营效益，又制约着企业的生产经营规模。
营运资本主要在研究企业的偿债能力和财务风险时使用。
如果营运资本过量，说明资产利用率不高；如果营运资本过少，说明固定资产投资依赖短期债务融资的程度较高，经营上会受到影响。
因此，营运资本管理是企业财务管理的重要组成部分。
然而，目前很多企业在营运资金管理方面存在很多问题，如资金营运能力较低、资金短缺，这些都严重影响到企业的经营效益。
因此解决好营运资金管理中存在的问题,有利于企业财务管理目标的实现。
我国中小企业从资金角度看，规模普遍较小，从市场抗风险能力看，抵御能力较弱，同时财务制度还不完善，财务管理水平相对落后，在经济市场大环境中，中小企业往往处于破产的风口浪尖上，此时财务管理显得尤为重要。
营运能力分析外文中英文翻译总资产周转率是指企业的销售收入与总资产平均余额的比率。
苏宁2004年销售收入为91.1亿元,平均总资产为14亿元；2005年销售收入增加到160.4亿元,平均总资产更是增长了2.3倍,达到31.9亿元。
由于总资产的增长幅度超过了销售收入的增长幅度,总资产周转率由6.49下降到5。
该比率的下降与苏宁在2005年大规模开张新店有直接的关系。
为了完成“全国性布网”的战略格局,苏宁在2005年新开门店65家,新登陆了20多个城市,而原先的物流、服务体系的辐射半径有限,因此苏宁要进行大量的管理平台的建设,以此来支撑以后在同一个城市建设其他卖场的物流和管理。
这使得苏宁扩张战略的初始成本相对较高。
固定资产周转率主要用于分析对厂房、设备等固定资产的利用效率，比率越高，说明利用率越高，管理水平越好。
如果固定资产周转率与同行业平均水平相比偏低，则说明企业对固定资产的利用率较低，可能会影响企业的获利能力。
它反应了企业资产的利用程度。
固定资产周转率=销售收入/平均固定资产净值固定资产平均净值=(期初净值+期末净值)÷2企业一定时期内主营业务收入净额同平均流动资产总额的比率,是评价企业资产利用率的另一重要指标。
它反映了企业流动资产的周转速度,是从企业全部资产中流动性最强的流动资产角度对企业资产的利用效率进行分析,以进一步揭示音响企业资产质量的主要因素。
流动资产周转率是指一定时期(一般为一年)的主营业务收人与全部流动资产平均余额的比值。
通过这个比率的分析,我们可以进一步了解企业短期内营运能力的变化。
从报表中看出,苏宁2005年销售收入近160亿元,增长幅度达到42.9%,而平均流动资产增加了一倍以上。
流动资产的大量增加没有带来同样幅度的销售收入的增长,因此流动资产周转率由2004年的7.36下降到2005年的5.61,说明苏宁流动资产的利用效率有所下降。
存货和应收账款是流动资产的主要组成部分,因此,可以通过对存货周转率和应收账款进一步分析流动资产周转率的变化。
An Analysis of Working Capital Management Results Across IndustriesGreg Filbeck。
Schweser Study ProgramThomas M. Krueger. University of Wisconsin-La Crosse AbstractFirms are able to reduce financing costs and/or increase the funds available for expansion by minimizing the amount of funds tied up in current assets。
We provide insights into the performance of surveyed firms across key components of working capital management by using the CFO magazine’s annual Working Capital Management Survey。
We discover that significant differences exist between industries in working capital measures across time。
In addition。
we discover that these measures for working capital change significantly within industries across time。
IntroductionThe importance of efficient working capital management is indisputable. Working capital is the difference between resources in cash or readily convertible into cash (Current Assets) and organizational commitments for which cash will soon be required （Current Liabilities）. The objective of working capital management is to maintain the optimum balance of each of the working capital components。
外文翻译The relationship between working capital management and profitability of listed companiesMaterial Source: Electronic copy available athttp://ss / Author: Ioannis LazaridisAbstractIn this paper we investigate the relationship of corporate profitability and working capital management. We used a sample of 131 companies listed in the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE) for the period of 2001-2004. The purpose of this paper is to establish a relationship that is statistical significant between profitability, the cash conversion cycle and its components for listed firms in the ASE. The results of our research showed that there is statistical significance between profitability, measured through gross operating profit, and the cash conversion cycle. Moreover managers can create profits for their companies by handling correctly the cash conversion cycle and keeping each different component (accounts receivables, accounts payables, inventory) to an optimum level.IntroductionCapital structure and working capital management are two areas widely revisited by academia in order to postulate firms’ profitability. Working capital management have been approached in numerous ways. Other researchers studied the impact of optimum inventory management while other authors studied the management of accounts receivables in an optimum way that leads to profit maximisation1. According to Deloof 2 (2003) the way that working capital is managed has a significant impact on profitability of firms. This result indicates that there is a certain level of working capital requirements which potentially maximises returns.Other work on the field of working capital management focuses on the routines employed by firms. This research showed that firms which focus on cash management were larger, with fewer cash sales, more seasonality and possibly more cash flow problems. While smaller firms focused more on stock management and less profitable firms were focused on credit management routines. It is suggestedthat high growth firms follow a more reluctant credit policy towards their customers, while they tie up more capital in the form of inventory. Meanwhile accounts payables will increase due to better relations of suppliers with financial institutions which divert this advantage of financial cost to their clients.According to Wilner (2000) most firms extensively use trade credit despite its apparent greater cost, and trade credit interest rates commonly exceed 18 percent5. In addition to that he states that in 1993 American firms extended their credit towards customers by 1.5 trillion dollars. Similarly Deloof (2003) found out through statistics from the National Bank of Belgium that in 1997 accounts payable were 13% of their total assets while accounts receivables and inventory accounted for 17% and 10% respectively. Summers and Wilson (2000) report that in the UK corporate sector more than 80% of daily business transactions are on credit terms6.There seems to be a strong relation between the cash conversion cycle of a firm and its profitability. The three different components of cash conversion cycle (accounts payables, accounts receivables and inventory) can be managed in different ways in order to maximise profitability or to enhance the growth of a company. Sometimes trade credit is a vehicle to attract new customers. Many firms are prepared to change their standard credit terms in order to win new customers and to gain large orders.In addition to that credit can stimulate sales because it allows customers to assess product quality before paying8. Therefore it is up to the individual company whether a ‘marketing’ approach should be followed when managing the working capital through credit extension. However the financial department of such a company will face cash flow and liquidity problems since capital will be invested in customers and inventory respectively. In order to have maximum value, equilibrium should be maintained in receivables-payables and inventory. According to Pike & Cheng (2001) credit management seeks to create, safeguard and realise a portfolio of high quality accounts receivable. Given the significant investment in accounts receivable by most large firms, credit management policy choices and practices could have important implications for corporate value9. Successful management of resources will lead to corporate profitability, but how can we measure management success since a period of ‘credit granting’ might lead to increased sales and market share whilst accompanied by decreased profitability or the opposite? Since working capital management is best described by the cash conversion cycle we will try to establish a link between profitability and management of the cash conversion cycle. This simple equationencompasses all three very important aspects of working capital management. It is an indication of how long a firm can carry on if it was to stop its operation or it indicates the time gap between purchase of goods and collection of sales. The optimum level of inventories will have a direct effect on profitability since it will release working capital resources which in turn will be invested in the business cycle, or will increase inventory levels in order to respond to higher product demand. Similarly both credit policy from suppliers and credit period granted to customers will have an impact on profitability. In order to understand the way working capital is managed cash conversion cycle and its components will be statistically analysed. In this paper we investigate the relationship between working capital management and firms’ profitability for 131 listed companies in the Athens Stock Exchange for the period 2001-2004. The purpose of this paper is to establish a relationship that is statistical significant between profitability, the cash conversion cycle and its components for listed firms in the ASE (Athens Stock Exchange). The paper is structured as follows. In the next section we present the variables used as well as the chosen sample of firms. Results of the descriptive statistics accompanied with regression modelling relating profitability (the dependent variable) against other independent variables including components of the cash conversion cycle, in order to test statistical significance. Finally the last section discusses the findings of this paper and comes up with conclusions related with working capital management policies and profitability.2. Data Collection and Variables(i) Data CollectionThe data collected were from listed firms in the Athens Stock Exchange Market. The reason we chose this market is primarily due to the reliability of the financial statements. Companies listed in the stock market have an incentive to present profits if those exist in order to make their shares more attractive. Contrary to listed firms, non listed firms in Greece have less of an incentive to present true operational results and usually their financial statements do not reflect real operational and financial activity. Hiding profits in order to avoid corporate tax is a common tactic for non listed firms in Greece which makes them less of a suitable sample for analysis where one can draw inference, based on financial data, for working capital practices.For the purpose of this research certain industries have been omitted due to their type of activity. We followed the classification of NACE10 industries fromwhich electricity and water, banking and financial institutions, insurance, rental and other services firms have been omitted. The original sample consisted of about 300 firms which narrowed down to 131 companies. The most recent period for which we had complete data was 2001-2004. Some of the firms were not included in the data due to lack of information for the certain period. Finally the financial statements were obtained from the ICAP SA11 database. Our analysis uses stacked data for the period 2001-2004 which results to 524 total observations.(ii) VariablesAs mentioned earlier in the introduction the cash conversion cycle is used as a measure in order to gauge profitability. This measure is described by the following equation:Cash Conversion Cycle = No of Days A/R12 + No of Days Inventory – No of Days A/P13 (1)In turn the components of cash conversion cycle are given below:No of Days A/R = Accounts Receivables/Sales*365 (2)No of Days Inventory = Inventory/Cost of Goods Sold*365 (3)No of Days A/P = Accounts Payables/Cost of Goods Sold*365 (4)Another variable chosen for the model specification is that of company size measured through the natural logarithm of sales. Shares and participation to other firm are considered as fixed financial assets. The variable I we use which is related to financial assets is the following:Fixed Financial Assets Ratio = Fixed Financial Assets/Total Assets (5) This variable is used since for many listed companies financial assets comprise a significant part of their total assets. This variable will be used later on in order to obtain an indication how the relationship and participation of one firm to others affects its profitability. Another variable used in order to perform regression analysis later on, includes financial debt measured through the following equation: Financial Debt Ratio = (Short Term Loans + Long Term Loans)/Total Assets (6) This is used in order to establish relation between the external financing of the firm and its total assets.Finally the dependent variable used is that of gross operating profit. In order to obtain this variable we subtract cost of goods sold from total sales and divide the result with total assets minus financial assets.Gross Operating Profit = (Sales –COGS14)/(Total Assets –Financial Assets(7)The reason for using this variable instead of earnings before interest tax depreciation amortization (EBITDA) or profits before or after taxes is because we wa nt to associate operating ‘success’ or ‘failure’ with an operating ratio and relate this variable with other operating variables (i.e cash conversion cycle). Moreover we want to exclude the participation of any financial activity from operational activity that might affect overall profitability, thus financial assets are subtracted from total assets.3. Descriptive StatisticsThe following table gives the descriptive statistics of the collected variables. The total of observations sums to n = 524. On average 16.8% of total assets are financial assets (including participation to other subsidiaries). Total sales have a mean of 118.9 million euros while the median is 31.9 million. The firms included in our sample had an average of 2.58% net operating profit. The credit period granted to their customers ranged at 148 days on average (median 130 days) while they paid their creditors in 96 days on average (median 73 days). Inventory takes on average 136 days to be sold (median 104 days). Overall the average cash conversion cycle ranged at 188 days (median 165 days).。
文献出处：Sunday K J. Effective Working Capital Management in Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs)[J]. International Journal of Business & Management, 2011, 6(9)：271-279.第一部分为译文，第二部分为原文。
默认格式：中文五号宋体，英文五号Times New Roma，行间距1.5倍。
中小企业有效的营运资金管理摘要：中小企业（SME）的主要有效流动资金管理的需求对中小企业的偿付能力和流动性仍然至关重要。
大多数中小企业不关心他们的流动资金状况，大多数人很少考虑到他们的流动资金状况，这些企业大多数都没有标准的信贷政策。
许多人不关心他们的财务状况，他们只是经营，他们主要关注现金收据和他们的银行账户。
本研究使用标准流动资金比率来衡量所选企业的流动资金的有效性，所选择的公司显示过度交易和流动性不足的迹象，关注的是利润最大化，而没有认识到债权人的支付，这些公司的债务回报率低于信贷支付。
建议中小企业在尼日利亚经济中生存下去，必须制定标准的信贷政策，确保良好的财务报告和管理制度，他们必须充分认识到营运资金的管理，以确保连续性，增长和偿付能力。
关键词：中小企业（SME），营运资金管理，流动资金，偿付能力引言中小企业业务仍然是一个国家经济增长和发展最有活力的力量和代理人。
中小企业至少占美国国内生产总值的60％（Ovia，2001年）尼日利亚的中小企业全部在我们周围，只有少数几个中小企业才能成为最受欢迎的企业。
中小企业是几个新兴行业的重大突破。
美国（IT）的大部分突破都是由中小企业推动的。
当时公司是一家小规模企业，由盖茨（Paul Gates）和保罗·艾伦（Paul Allen）于1980年开发的微软磁盘操作系统（MS Dos）在全球拥有约80％的运营成本。
文献信息：文献标题：Impact of Aggressive Working Capital Management Policy on Firms’ Profitability（激进的营运资本管理政策对企业盈利能力的影响）国外作者：Mian Sajid Nazir，Talat Afza文献出处：《The IUP Journal of Applied Finance》,2009,Vol.15,PP19-30 字数统计：英文2669单词，14456字符；中文4407汉字外文文献：Impact of Aggressive Working Capital Management Policyon Firms’ ProfitabilityIntroductionThe corporate finance literature has traditionally focused on the study of long-term financial decisions, particularly investments, capital structure, dividends or company valuation decisions. However, short-term assets and liabilities are important components of total assets and need to be carefully analyzed. Management of these short-term assets and liabilities warrants a careful investigation since the working capital m anagement plays an important role in a firm’s profitability and risk as well as its value (Smith, 1980). Efficient management of working capital is a fundamental part of the overall corporate strategy in creating the shareholders’ value. Firms try to keep an optimal level of working capital that maximizes their value (Deloof, 2003; Howorth and Westhead, 2003 and Afza and Nazir, 2007).In general, from the perspective of Chief Financial Officer (CFO), working capital management is a simple and straightforward concept of ensuring the ability of the organization to fund the difference between the short-term assets and short-term liabilities (Harris, 2005). However, a ‘Total’ approach is desired as it can cover all thecompany’s activities relating to vendor, cu stomer and product (Hall, 2002). In practice, working capital management has become one of the most important issues in the organizations where many financial executives are struggling to identify the basic working capital drivers and an appropriate level of working capital (Lamberson, 1995). Consequently, companies can minimize risk and improve the overall performance by understanding the role and drivers of working capital management.A firm may adopt an aggressive working capital management policy with a low level of current assets as a percentage of total assets, or it may also be used for the financing decisions of the firm in the form of high level of current liabilities as a percentage of total liabilities. Excessive levels of current assets may have a negative effect on the firm’s profitability, whereas a low level of current assets may lead to a lower level of liquidity and stockouts, resulting in difficulties in maintaining smooth operations (Van Horne and Wachowicz, 2004).The main objective of working capital management is to maintain an optimal balance between each of the working capital components. Business success heavily depends on the financial executives’ ability to effectively manage receivables, inventory, and payables (Filbeck and Krueger, 2005). Firms can reduce their financing costs and/or increase the funds available for expansion projects by minimizing the amount of investment tied up in current assets. Most of the financial managers’ time and efforts are allocated towards bringing non-optimal levels of current assets and liabilities back to optimal levels (Lamberson, 1995). An optimal level of working capital would be the one in which a balance is achieved between risk and efficiency. It requires continuous monitoring to maintain proper level in various components of working capital, i.e., cash receivables, inventory and payables, etc.In general, current assets are considered as one of the important components of total assets of a firm. A firm may be able to reduce the investment in fixed assets by renting or leasing plant and machinery, whereas the same policy cannot be followed for the components of working capital. The high level of current assets may reduce the risk of liquidity associated with the opportunity cost of funds that may have been invested in long-term assets. Though the impact of working capital policies onprofitability is highly important, only a few empirical studies have been carried out to examine this relationship. This study investigates the potential relationship of aggressive/conservative policies with the accounting and market measures of profitability of Pakistani firms using a panel data set for the period 1998-2005. The present study is expected to contribute to better understand these policies and their impact on profitability, especially in emerging markets like Pakistan.Research MethodologyVariables Used in the StudyThis study uses aggressive investment policy as used by Weinraub and Visscher (1998), who analyzed working capital policies of 126 industrial firms in the US market. Aggressive Investment Policy (AIP) results in minimal level of investment in current assets versus fixed assets. In contrast, a conservative investment policy places a greater proportion of capital in liquid assets with the opportunity cost of less profitability. If the level of current assets increases in proportion to the total assets of the firm, the management is said to be more conservative in managing the current assets of the firm. In order to measure the degree of aggressiveness of working capital investment policy, the following ratio was used:where a lower ratio means a relatively aggressive policy.On the other hand, an Aggressive Financing Policy (AFP) utilizes higher levels of current liabilities and less long-term debt. In contrast, a conservative financing policy uses more long-term debt and capital and less current liabilities. The firms are more aggressive in terms of current liabilities management if they are concentrating on the use of more current liabilities which put their liquidity on risk. The degree of aggressiveness of a financing policy adopted by a firm is measured by working capital financing policy, and the following ratio is used:where a higher ratio means a relatively aggressive policy.The impact of working capital policies on the profitability has been analyzed through accounting measures of profitability as well as market measures of profitability, i.e., Return on Assets (ROA) and Tobin’s q. These variables of return are calculated as:Tobin’s q compares the value of a company given by financial markets with the value of a company’s assets. A low q (between 0 and 1) means that the cost to replace a firm’s assets is greater than the value of its stock. This implies that the stock is undervalued. Conversely, a high q (greater than 1) implies that a firm’s stock is more expensive than the replacement cost of its assets, which implies that the stock is overvalued. It is calculated as:where Market Value of Firm (MVF) is the sum of book value of long plus short term and market value of equity. Market value of equity is calculated by multiplying the number of shares outstanding with the current market price of the stock in a particular year.Control VariablesIn working capital literature, various studies have used the control variables along with the main variables of working capital in order to have an apposite analysis of working capital management on the profitability of firms (Lamberson, 1995; Smith and Begemann, 1997; Deelof, 2003; Eljelly, 2004; Teruel and Solano, 2005 and Lazaridis and Tryfonidis, 2006). On the same lines, along with working capital variables, the present study has taken into consideration some control variables relating to firms such as the size of the firm, the growth in its sales, and its financial leverage. The size of the firm (SIZE) has been measured by the logarithm of its totalassets, as the original large value of total assets may disturb the analysis. The growth of firm (GROWTH) is measured by variation in its annual sales value with reference to previous year’s sales[(Sales t –Sales t –1)/Sales t –1]. Moreover, the financial leverage (LVRG) was taken as the debt to equity ratio of each firm for the whole sample period. Some studies, like Deloof (2003) in his study of large Belgian firms, also considered the ratio of fixed financial assets to total assets as a control variable; however, this variable cannot be included in the present study because of unavailability of data, as most of the firms do not disclose full information in their financial statements. Finally, since good economic conditions tend to be reflected in a firm’s profitability (Lamberson, 1995), this phenomenon has been controlled for the evolution of the economic cycle using the GDPGR variable, which measures the real annual GDP growth in Pakistan for each of the study year from 1998 to 2005.Statistical AnalysisThe impact of aggressive and conservative working capital policies on the profitability of the firms has been evaluated by applying the panel data regression analysis. The performance variables (ROA and Tobin’s q) as well as the TCA/TA and TCL/TA along with the control variables were regressed using the SPSS software. The following regression equations are run to estimate the impact of working capital policies on the profitability measures.where,TCA/TA=Total current assets to total assets ratioTCL/TA i=Total current liabilities to total assets ratioROA i=Return on assetsTobin’s q i=V alue of qSIZE i=Natural log of firm sizeGROWTH i=Growth of salesLVRG i=Financial leverage of firmsGDPGR i=Real Annual GDP growth rate of Pakistanα=Intercept; andε=Error term of the modelSample and DataThe sample of the study consists of all non-financial firms listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE). KSE has divided the non-financial firms into various industrial sectors based on their nature of business. In order to be included in the sample, a firm must be in business for the whole study period. Also, firms should neither have been delisted by the KSE nor merged with any other firm during the whole window period. New incumbents in the market during the study period have also not been included in the sample. Furthermore, firms must have complete data for the period 1998-2005. Firms with negative equity during the study period have also been excluded. Thus, the final sample consists of 204 non-financial firms from 17 various industrial sectors.This study used annual financial data of 204 non-financial firms for the period 1998-2005. The panel data set was developed for eight years and for the 204 sampled firms which produced 1,632 year-end observations. The required financial data for the purpose of the study was obtained from the respective companies’annual reports and publications of State Bank of Pakistan. The data regarding annual average market prices was collected from the daily quotations of KSE.AnalysisTable 1 presents the results of regression model in which the impact of working capital investment policy on the performance measurements has been examined. The F-values of regression models run are found statistically significant, whereas Durbin-Watson statistics of more than 1.8 indicate less correlation among the independent variables of the regressions models. The t-statistics of working capital investment policy is positive and statistically significant at 1% level for Return on Assets and Tobin’s q. The positive coefficient of TCA/TA indicates a negative relationship between the degree of aggressiveness of investment policy and return on assets. As the TCA/TA increases, the degree of aggressiveness decreases, and return on assets increases. Therefore, there is a negative relationship between the relative degree of aggressiveness of working capital investment policies of firms and both performance measures, i.e., ROA and Tobin’s q. This similarity in market and accounting returns confirms the notion that investors do not believe in the adoption of aggressive approach in the working capital management, hence, they do not give any additional weight to the firms on KSE.Table 2 reports regression results for working capital financing policy and the performance measures. The F-value of regression models and Durbin-Watson statistics indicate similar results as reported in Table 1. The negative value of coefficient for TCL/TA also points out the negative relationship between the aggressiveness of working capital financing policy and return on assets. The higher the TCL/TA ratio, the more aggressive the financing policy, that yields negative return on assets. However, surprisingly, the relationship between Tobin’s q and working capital financing policy has been established as positive and statistically significant. Investors were found giving more weight to the firms which are adopting an aggressive approach towards working capital financing policy and having higher levels of short-term and spontaneous financing on their balance sheets.The control variables used in the regression models are natural log of firm size, sales growth, real GDP growth and the average leverage. All the control variables have their impact on the performance of the firms. Firms’size causes the returns of the firms to be increased and it is found to be statistically significant. Moreover, GROWTH and LVRG are found to be significantly associated with the book-based returns on assets which confirm the notion that leverage and growth are strongly correlated with the book value-based performance measures (Deloof, 2003 and Eljelly,2004). Real GDP growth may not affect the returns based on book values; however, investors may react positively to a positive change in the level of economic activity which is in accordance with the findings of Lamberson (1995).The above results contradict the findings of Gardner et al. (1986), Deloof (2003), Eljelly (2004) and Teruel and Solano (2005); however, they are in accordance with Afza and Nazir (2007) and produced a negative relationship between the aggressiveness of working capital policies and accounting measures of profitability. Managers cannot create value if they adopt an aggressive approach towards working capital investment and working capital financing policy. However, if firms adopt aggressive approach in managing their short-term liabilities, investors give more value to those firms. The degree of aggressiveness of working capital policies adopted helps only in creating shareholders’wealth through increased market performance, whereas accounting performance cannot be increased by being aggressive in managing the working capital requirements. The results of this study are somewhat different from those conducted in the developed economies. Pakistan is one of the emerging economies and Pakistani markets are not fully transparent and efficient to fully absorb the impact of information. The study results confirm this state of Pakistani markets.ConclusionThe present study investigates the relationship between the aggressive/conservative working capital asset management and financing polices and its impact on profitability of 204 Pakistani firms divided into 16 industrial groups by KSE for the period 1998-2005. The impact of aggressive/conservative working capital investment and the financing policies has been examined using panel data regression models between working capital policies and profitability. The study finds a negative relationship between the profitability measures of firms and degree of aggressiveness of working capital investment and financing policies. The firms report negative returns if they follow an aggressive working capital policy. These results were furthervalidated by examining the impact of aggressive working capital policies on market measures of profitability, which was not tested before. The results of Tobin’s q were in line of the accounting measures of profitability and produced almost similar results for working capital investment policy. However, investors were found giving more value to those firms that are more aggressive in managing their current liabilities.The study used a new measure of profitability, i.e., Tobin’s q and panel data regression analysis, to investigate the relationship between working capital management and firm returns in Pakistan. The findings of the present study are expected to contribute significantly to finance literature. The results of the present study are in contradiction to those of some earlier studies on the issue. This phenomenon may be attributed to the inconsistent and volatile economic conditions of Pakistan. The reasons for this contradiction may further be explored in future researches.The study also suggests some policy implications for the managers and prospective investors in the emerging market of Pakistan. Firms with more aggressive policy towards working capital may not be able to generate more profit. So, as far as the book value performance is concerned, managers cannot generate more returns on assets by following aggressive approach towards short-term assets and liabilities. On the other hand, investors are found giving more value to the firms that adopt an aggressive approach towards working capital financing policies. The market value of firms using high level of current liabilities in their financing is more than the book value. The investors believe that firms with less equity and less long-term loans would be able to perform better than the others. However, there are various other factors like agency problem which may play a pivotal role in such cases, and so these factors may further be explored in future.中文译文：激进的营运资本管理政策对企业盈利能力的影响简介企业融资文章历来侧重于研究长期财务决策，特别是投资、资本结构、股利和公司估值决策。
营运资金管理中英双语文献营运资金是企业用于日常运营的资金，包括现金、存货、应收账款等。
良好的营运资金管理可以确保企业正常运转和资金充足，同时还能减少财务风险和成本。
以下是关于营运资金管理的中英双语文献：1. 《营运资金管理的重要性及其对企业运营的影响》(The Importance of Working Capital Management and Its Impact on Business Operations)本文介绍了营运资金管理的概念和重要性，探讨了如何优化营运资金管理以提高企业效率和盈利能力。
2. 《营运资金管理策略的选择与实施》(Selection and Implementation of Working Capital Management Strategies) 该文讨论了不同的营运资金管理策略，并提供了实施这些策略的具体步骤和技巧，以帮助企业实现资金最大化利用。
3. 《营运资金管理与企业绩效》(Working Capital Management and Firm Performance)该研究探讨了营运资金管理与企业绩效之间的关系，并证实了营运资金管理对企业绩效的重要性。
4. 《营运资金管理中的财务风险与控制》(Financial Risk and Control in Working Capital Management)该文描述了营运资金管理中的财务风险，并提出了相应的控制措施，以帮助企业降低财务风险并增强资金管理能力。
5. 《营运资金管理中的现金流预测与控制》(Cash Flow Forecasting and Control in Working Capital Management) 本文介绍了现金流预测在营运资金管理中的重要性，并提供了现金流预测的方法和技巧，以帮助企业更好地管理资金。
以上是关于营运资金管理的中英双语文献，这些文献可以帮助企业了解营运资金管理的重要性和实施方法，提高企业的资金使用效率和管理能力。
盈利能力外文资料翻译译文资本结构与企业盈利能力的关系一直是众多学者探讨的焦点问题之一。
资本结构关乎企业的资金成本、财务风险、盈利能力，而资金成本和财务风险都最终影响到企业的持续盈利能力。
本文主要从财务困境成本理论和代理成本理论来分析资本结构对企业盈利能力的影响。
企业的资本结构与盈利能力之间的相关性不明显，但是提高企业的长期资本负债率可以改善企业的权益资本净利率。
长期债务的资金成本主要体现为利息费用和筹资费用。
由于利息费用和筹资费用可以抵税，所以企业的实际资本成本要低于债权人索取的报酬率。
债务资本的成本主要由公司的财务结构、偿债能力、经营活动现金净流量、经营能力、经营效益、市场利率以及当前的市场经济状况决定。
长期负债通常面临更大的通货膨胀影响，投资者要求的报酬中必然会包含着通货膨胀的因素影响；长期负债由于使用期限更长而受企业经营不稳定性的影响就更大，长期债务面临更大的信贷违约风险，因此长期债务资本成本一般比短期资本的成本高。
本文以有效的资本市场为前提假设——债权人都是理性的，所以随着企业长期债务资本率的提高，债权人必然会索取越来越高的报酬率。
权益资本的成本包括机会成本。
企业的权益资本通常是无偿使用的，其不需要偿付本金，不是必须向所有者支付资金成本，但站在企业所有者的角度来看，企业所有者投入的资本以及在经营过程中积累的资本也应于使用后取得相应的报酬，也就是所谓的资金成本，权益资本成本隐含着一种机会成本。
权益资本成本是企业所有者要求的最低投资收益率。
目前资本资产定价模型是用来求权益资本成本的主要模型之一，但是资本资产定价模型只考虑了权益资本的机会成本而没有考虑到新股的发行费用，但笔者认为权益资本成本主要由使用股东权益的机会成本和新股的发行费用构成。
经过相关统计，新股的发行费用一般占到新股发行市价的5%-10%，也就是说发行10个亿大概有7500万的发行费用，对一个企业来说这是一笔非常大的支出，所以计算权益资本成本时必须要考虑新股的发行费用。
An Analysis of Working Capital Management Resultsacross IndustriesGreg Filbeck and Thomas M. KruegerAbstractFirms are able to reduce financing costs and/or increase the funds available for expansion by minimizing the amount of funds tied up in current assets. We provide insights into the performance of surveyed firms across key components of working capital management by using the CFO magazine’s annual Working Capital Management Survey. We discover that significant differences exist between industries in working capital measures across time. In addition, we discover that these measures for working capital change significantly within industries across time.IntroductionThe importance of efficient working capital management is indisputable. Working capital is the difference between resources in cash or readily convertible into cash (Current Assets) and organizational commitments for which cash will soon be required (Current Liabilities). The objective of working capital management is to maintain the optimum balance of each of the working capital components. Business viability relies on the ability to effectively manage receivables, inventory, and payables. Firms are able to reduce financing costs and/or increase the funds available for expansion by minimizing the amount of funds tied up in current assets. Much managerial effort is expended in bringing non-optimal levels of current assets and liabilities back toward optimal levels. An optimal level would be one in which a balance is achieved between risk and efficiency.A recent example of business attempting to maximize working capital management is the recurrent attention being given to the application of Six Sigma® methodology. Six Sigma® methodologies help companies measure and ensure quality in all areas of the enterprise. When used to identify and rectify discrepancies, inefficiencies and erroneous transactions in the financial supply chain. Six Sigma® reduces Days Sales Outstanding(DSO)，accelerates the payment cycle, improves customer satisfaction and reduces the necessary amount and cost of working capital needs. There appear to be many success stories, including Jennifer Towne’s (2002) report of a 15 percent decrease in days that sales are outstanding, resulting in an increased cash flow of approximately $2 million at Thibodaux Regional Medical Center. Furthermore, bad debts declined from $3.4 million to $600.000. However, Waxer’s (2003) study of multiple firms employing Six Sigma® find s that it is really a “get rich slow” technique with a rate of return hovering in the 1.2 – 4.5 percent range.Even in a business using Six Sigma® methodology, an “optimal” level of working capital management needs to be identified. Industry factors may impact firm credit policy, inventory management and bill-paying activities. Some firms may be better suited to minimize receivables and inventory, while others maximize payables. Another aspect of “optimal” is the extent to which poor financial results can be tied to sub-optimal performance. Fortunately, these issues are testable with data published by CFO magazine, which claims to be the source of “tools and information for the financial executive.” and are the subject of this research.In addition to providing mean and variance values for the working capital measures and the overall metric, two issues will be addressed in this research. One research question is “are firms within a particular industry clustered together at consistent levels of working capi tal measures?” For instance, are firms in one industry able to quickly transfer sales into cash, while firms from another industry tend to have high sales levels for the particular level of inventory. Th e other research question is “D oes working capital management performance for firms within a given industry change from year-to-year?”The following section presents a brief literature review. Next, the research method is described, including some information about the annual Working Capital Management Survey published by CFO magazine. Findings are then presented and conclusions are drawn.Related Literature第2页（共6页）The importance of working capital management is not new to the finance literature. Over twenty years ago, Largay and Stickney (1980) reported that the then-recent bankruptcy of W.T. Grant, a nationwide chain of department stores, should have been anticipated because the corporation had been running a deficit cash flow from operations for eight of the last ten years of its corporate life. As part of a stu dy of the Fortune 500’s financial management practices, Gilbert and Reichert (1995) find that accounts receivable management models are used in 59 percent of these firms to improve working capital projects, while inventory management models were used in 60 percent of the companies. More recently, Farragher, Kleiman and Sahu (1999) find that 55 percent of firms in the S&P Industrial index complete some form of a cash flow assessment, but did not present insights regarding accounts receivable and inventory management, or the variations of any current asset accounts or liability accounts across industries. Thus, mixed evidence exists concerning the use of working capital management techniques.Theoretical determination of optimal trade credit limits are the subject of many articles over the years (e.g. Schwartz 1974; Scherr 1996) with scant attention paid to actual accounts receivable management. Across a limited sample, Weinraub and Visscher (1998) observe a tendency of firms with low levels of current ratios to also have low levels of current liabilities. Simultaneously investigating accounts receivable and payable issues. Hill·Sartoris and Ferguson (1984) find differences in the way payment dates are defined. Payees define the date of payment as the date payment is received, while payors view payment as the postmark date. Additional WCM insight across firms, industries and time can add to this body of research.Maness and Zietlow (2002. 51. 496) presents two models of value creation that incorporate effective short-term financial management activities. However, these models are generic models and do not consider unique firm or industry influences. Maness and Zietlow discuss industry influences in a short paragraph that includes the observation that “An industry a company is located in may have more influence on that company’s fortunes than ov erall GNP” (2002. 507). In fact, a careful review of this 627-page textbook finds only sporadic information on actual firm levels of WCM dimensions, virtually nothing on第3页（共6页）industry factors except for some boxed items with titles such as “Should a Retailer Offer an In-House Credit Card” (128) and nothing on WCM stability over time. This researchwill attempt to fill this void by investigating patterns related to working capital measures within industries and illustrate differences between industries across time.An extensive survey of library and Internet resources provided very few recent reports about working capital management. The most relevant set of articles was Weisel and Bradley’s (2003) article on cash flow management and one of inventory control as a result of effective supply chain management by Hadley (2004).Research MethodThe first annual CFO Working Capital Survey, a joint project with REL Consultancy Group, was published in the June 1997 issue of CFO (Mintz and Lezere 1997). REL is a London, England-based management consulting firm specializing in working capital issues for its global list of clients. The original survey reports several working capital benchmarks for public companies using data for 1996. Each company is ranked against its peers and also against the entire field of 1000 companies. REL continues to update the original information on an annual basis.REL uses the “cash flow from operations” value l ocated on firm cash flow statements to estimate cash conversion efficiency (CCE). This value indicates how well a company transforms revenues into cash flow. A “days of working capital” (DWC) value is based on the dollar amount in each of the aggregate, equally-weighted receivables, inventory and payables accounts. T he “days of working capital” (D WC) represents the time period between purchases of inventory on account from vendor until the sale to the customer, the collection of the receivables and payment receipt. Thus, it reflects the company’s ability to finance its core operations with vendor credit. A detailed investigation of WCM is possible because CFO also provides firm and industry values for days sales outstanding (A/R), inventory turnover and days payables outstanding (A/P).Research Findings：Average and Annual Working Capital Management Performance Working capital management component definitions and average values for the entire 1996 – 2000 period. Across the nearly 1.000 firms in the survey, cash flow from operations,第4页（共6页）defined as cash flow from operations divided by sales and referred to as “ca sh conversion efficiency” (CCE). Averages 9.0 percent. Incorporating a 95 percent confidence interval, CCE ranges from 5.6 percent to 12.4 percent. The day’s working capital (DWC), defined as the sum of receivables and inventories less payables divided by daily sales, averages 51.8 days and is very similar to the days that sales are outstanding (50.6). Because the inventory turnover rate (once every 32.0 days) is similar to the number of days that payables are outstanding (32.4 days). In all instances, the standard deviation is relatively small, suggesting that these working capital management variables are consistent across CFO reports.Industry Rankings on Overall Working Capital Management Performance CFO magazine provides an overall working capital ranking for firms in its survey, using the following equation: Industry-based differences in overall working capital management are presented for the twenty-six industries that had at least eight companies included in the rankings each year. In the typical year, CFO magazine ranks 970 companies during this period. Industries are listed in order of the mean overall CFO ranking of working capital performance. Since the best average ranking possible for an eight-company industry is 4.5 (this assumes that the eight companies are ranked one through eight for the entire survey). It is quite obvious that all firms in the petroleum industry must have been receiving very high overall working capital management rankings. In fact, the petroleum industry is ranked first in CCE and third in DWC (as illustrated in Table 5 and discussed later in this paper). Furthermore, the petroleum industry had the lowest standard deviation of working capital rankings and range of working capital rankings. The only other industry with a mean overall ranking less than 100 was the Electric & Gas Utility industry, which ranked second in CCE and fourth in DWC. The two industries with the worst working capital rankings were Textiles and Apparel. Textiles rank twenty-second in CCE and twenty-sixth in DWC. The apparel industry ranks twenty-third and twenty-fourth in the two working capital measuresConclusions第5页（共6页）The research presented here is based on the annual ratings of working capital management published in CFO magazine. Our findings indicate a consistency in how industries “stack up” against each other over time with respect to the working capita l measures. However, the working capital measures themselves are not static (i.e. averages of working capital measures across all firms change annually); our results indicate significant movements across our entire sample over time. Our findings are important because they provide insight to working capital performance across time and on working capital management across industries. These changes may be in explained in part by macroeconomic factors. Changes in interest rates, rate of innovation and competition are likely to impact working capital management. As interest rates rise, there would be less desire to make payments early, which would stretch accounts payable, accounts receivable and cash accounts.The ramifications of this study include the finding of distinct levels of WCM measures for different industries, which tend to be stable over time. Many factors help to explain this discovery. The improving economy during the period of the study may have resulted in improved turnover in some industries, while slowing turnover may have been a signal of troubles ahead. Our results should be interpreted cautiously. Our study takes places over a short time frame during a generally improving market. In addition, the survey suffers from survivorship bias – only the top firms within each industry are ranked each year and the composition of those firms within the industry can change annually.Further research may take one of two lines. First, there could be a study of whether stock prices respond to CFO magazine’s publication of working cap ital management ratings. Second, there could be a study of which, if any, of the working capital management components relate to share price performance. Given our results, these studies need to take industry membership into consideration when estimating stock price reaction to working capital management performance.第6页（共6页）。
企业资金管理中英文对照外文翻译文献(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)An Analysis of Working Capital Management Results Across IndustriesAbstractFirms are able to reduce financing costs and/or increase the fund s available for expansion by minimizing the amount of funds tied upin current assets. We provide insights into the performance of surv eyed firms across key components of working capital management by usi ng the CFO magazine’s annual Working CapitalManagement Survey. We discover that significant differences exist b etween industries in working capital measures across time.In addition.w e discover that these measures for working capital change significantl y within industries across time.IntroductionThe importance of efficient working capital management is indisputa ble. Working capital is the difference between resources in cash or readily convertible into cash (Current Assets) and organizational commi tments for which cash will soon be required (Current Liabilities). Th e objective of working capital management is to maintain the optimum balance of each of the working capital components. Business viabilit y relies on the ability to effectively manage receivables. inventory.a nd payables. Firms are able to reduce financing costs and/or increase the funds available for expansion by minimizing the amount of funds tied up in current assets. Much managerial effort is expended in b ringing non-optimal levels of current assets and liabilities back towa rd optimal levels. An optimal level would be one in which a balance is achieved between risk and efficiency.A recent example of business attempting to maximize working capita l management is the recurrent attention being given to the applicatio n of Six Sigma®methodology. Six S igma®methodologies help companies measure and ensure quality in all areas of the enterprise. When used to identify and rectify discrepancies.inefficiencies and erroneous tra nsactions in the financial supply chain. Six Sigma®reduces Days Sale s Outstanding (DSO).accelerates the payment cycle.improves customer sati sfaction and reduces the necessary amount and cost of working capital needs. There appear to be many success stories including Jennifertwon’s(2002) report of a 15percent decrease in days that sales are outstanding.resulting in an increased cash flow of approximately $2 million at Thibodaux Regional Medical Cenrer.Furthermore bad debts declined from 3.4millin to $6000000.However.Waxer’s(2003)study of multiple firms employing Six Sig ma®finds that it is really a “get rich slow”technique with a r ate of return hovering in the 1.2 – 4.5 percent range.Even in a business using Six Sigma®methodology. an “optimal”level of working capital management needs to be identified. Industry factors may impa ct firm credit policy.inventory management.and bill-paying activities. S ome firms may be better suited to minimize receivables and inventory. while others maximize payables. Another aspect of “optimal”is the extent to which poor financial results can be tied to sub-optimal pe rformance.Fortunately.these issues are testable with data published by CFO magazine. which claims to be the source of “tools and informati on for the financial executive.”and are the subject of this resear ch.In addition to providing mean and variance values for the working capital measures and the overall metric.two issues will be addressed in this research. One research question is. “are firms within a p articular industry clustered together at consistent levels of working capital measures?For instance.are firms in one industry able to quickl y transfer sales into cash.while firms from another industry tend to have high sales levels for the particular level of inventory . The other research question is. “does working capital management perform ance for firms within a given industry change from year-to-year?”The following section presents a brief literature review.Next.the r esearch method is described.including some information about the annual Working Capital Management Survey published by CFO magazine. Findings are then presented and conclusions are drawn.Related LiteratureThe importance of working capital management is not new to the f inance literature. Over twenty years ago. Largay and Stickney (1980) reported that the then-recent bankruptcy of W.T. Grant. a nationwide chain of department stores.should have been anticipated because the co rporation had been running a deficit cash flow from operations for e ight of the last ten years of its corporate life.As part of a stud y of the Fortune 500s financial management practices. Gilbert and Rei chert (1995) find that accounts receivable management models are used in 59 percent of these firms to improve working capital projects.wh ile inventory management models were used in 60 percent of the compa nies.More recently. Farragher. Kleiman and Sahu (1999) find that 55 p ercent of firms in the S&P Industrial index complete some form of a cash flow assessment. but did not present insights regarding account s receivable and inventory management. or the variations of any curre nt asset accounts or liability accounts across industries.Thus.mixed ev idence exists concerning the use of working capital management techniq ues.Theoretical determination of optimal trade credit limits are the s ubject of many articles over the years (e.g. Schwartz 1974; Scherr 1 996).with scant attention paid to actual accounts receivable management.Across a limited sample. Weinraub and Visscher (1998) observe a tend ency of firms with low levels of current ratios to also have low l evels of current liabilities. Simultaneously investigating accounts rece ivable and payable issues.Hill. Sartoris.and Ferguson (1984) find diffe rences in the way payment dates are defined. Payees define the date of payment as the date payment is received.while payors view paymen t as the postmark date.Additional WCM insight across firms.industries.a nd time can add to this body of research.Maness and Zietlow (2002. 51. 496) presents two models of value creation that incorporate effective short-term financial management acti vities.However.these models are generic models and do not consider uni que firm or industry influences. Maness and Zietlow discuss industry influences in a short paragraph that includes the observation that. “An industry a company is located in may have more influence on th at company’s fortunes than overall GNP”(2002. 507).In fact. a car eful review of this 627-page textbook finds only sporadic information on actual firm levels of WCM dimensions.virtually nothing on industr y factors except for some boxed items with titles such as. “Should a Retailer Offer an In-House Credit Card”(128) and nothing on WC M stability over time. This research will attempt to fill this void by investigating patterns related to working capital measures within industries and illustrate differences between industries across time.An extensive survey of library and Internet resources provided ver y few recent reports about working capital management. The most relev ant set of articles was Weisel and Bradley’s (2003) article on cash flow management and one of inventory control as a result of effect ive supply chain management by Hadley (2004).Research Method The CFO RankingsThe first annual CFO Working Capital Survey. a joint project with REL Consultancy Group.was published in the June 1997 issue of CFO (Mintz and Lezere 1997). REL is a London. England-based management co nsulting firm specializing in working capital issues for its global l ist of clients. The original survey reports several working capital b enchmarks for public companies using data for 1996. Each company is ranked against its peers and also against the entire field of 1.000 companies. REL continues to update the original information on an a nnual basis.REL uses the “cash flow from operations”value located on firm cash flow statements to estimate cash conversion efficiency (CCE). T his value indicates how well a company transforms revenues into cash flow. A “days of working capital”(DWC) value is based on the d ollar amount in each of the aggregate.equally-weighted receivables.inven tory.and payables accounts. The “days of working capital”(DNC) repr esents the time period between purchase of inventory on acccount fromvendor until the sale to the customer.the collection of the receiva bles. and payment receipt.Thus.it reflects the companys ability to fin ance its core operations with vendor credit. A detailed investigation of WCM is possible because CFO also provides firm and industry val ues for days sales outstanding (A/R).inventory turnover.and days payabl es outstanding (A/P).Research FindingsAverage and Annual Working Capital Management Performance Working capital management component definitions and average values for the entire 1996 –2000 period .Across the nearly 1.000 firms in the survey.cash flow from operations. defined as cash flow from operations divided by sales and referred to as “cash conversion ef ficiency”(CCE).averages 9.0 percent.Incorporating a 95 percent confide nce interval. CCE ranges from 5.6 percent to 12.4 percent. The days working capital (DWC). defined as the sum of receivables and invent ories less payables divided by daily sales.averages 51.8 days and is very similar to the days that sales are outstanding (50.6).because the inventory turnover rate (once every 32.0 days) is similar to the number of days that payables are outstanding (32.4 days).In all ins tances.the standard deviation is relatively small.suggesting that these working capital management variables are consistent across CFO report s.Industry Rankings on Overall Working Capital Management Perfo rmanceCFO magazine provides an overall working capital ranking for firms in its ing the following equation:Industry-based differences in overall working capital management are presented for the twenty-s ix industries that had at least eight companies included in the rank ings each year.In the typical year. CFO magazine ranks 970 companies during this period. Industries are listed in order of the mean ove rall CFO ranking of working capital performance. Since the best avera ge ranking possible for an eight-company industry is 4.5 (this assume s that the eight companies are ranked one through eight for the ent ire survey). it is quite obvious that all firms in the petroleum in dustry must have been receiving very high overall working capital man agement rankings.In fact.the petroleum industry is ranked first in CCE and third in DWC (as illustrated in Table 5 and discussed later i n this paper).Furthermore.the petroleum industry had the lowest standar d deviation of working capital rankings and range of working capital rankings. The only other industry with a mean overall ranking less than 100 was the Electric & Gas Utility industry.which ranked secon d in CCE and fourth in DWC. The two industries with the worst work ing capital rankings were Textiles and Apparel. Textiles rank twenty-s econd in CCE and twenty-sixth in DWC. The apparel industry ranks twenty-third and twenty-fourth in the two working capital measures ConclusionsThe research presented here is based on the annual ratings of wo rking capital management published in CFO magazine. Our findings indic ate a consistency in how industries “stack up”against each other over time with respect to the working capital measures.However.the wor king capital measures themselves are not static (i.e.. averages of wo rking capital measures across all firms change annually); our results indicate significant movements across our entire sample over time. O ur findings are important because they provide insight to working cap ital performance across time. and on working capital management across industries. These changes may be in explained in part by macroecono mic factors Changes in interest rates.rate of innovation.and competitio n are likely to impact working capital management. As interest rates rise.there would be less desire to make payments early.which would stretch accounts payable.accounts receivable.and cash accounts. The ra mifications of this study include the finding of distinct levels of WCM measures for different industries.which tend to be stable over ti me. Many factors help to explain this discovery. The improving econom y during the period of the study may have resulted in improved turn over in some industries.while slowing turnover may have been a signal of troubles ahead. Our results should be interpreted cautiously. Our study takes places over a short time frame during a generally impr oving market. In addition. the survey suffers from survivorship bias –only the top firms within each industry are ranked each year and the composition of those firms within the industry can change annua lly.Further research may take one of two lines.First.there could bea study of whether stock prices respond to CFO magazine’s publication of working capital management rating.Second,there could be a study of which if any of the working capital management components relate to share price performance.Given our results,there studies need to take industry membership into consideration when estimating stock price reaction to working capital management performance.对整个行业中营运资金管理的研究格雷格Filbeck.Schweser学习计划托马斯M克鲁格.威斯康星大学拉克罗斯摘要:企业能够降低融资成本或者尽量减少绑定在流动资产上的成立基金数额来用于扩大现有的资金。
![营运资金管理对中小企业的盈利能力的影响[外文翻译]](https://img.taocdn.com/s1/m/a0b7820f0a4c2e3f5727a5e9856a561252d321b0.png)
营运资金管理对中小企业的盈利能力的影响[外文翻译]本科毕业论文（设计）外文翻译工作资本管理对中小企业盈利能力的影响》传统上，企业财务文献的研究主要集中在长期财务决策方面。
研究人员特别关注分析投资、资本结构、股息或公司估值等主题。
但是，企业对短期资产的投资和使用期限不到一年的资源，占据了企业资产负债表的主要份额。
事实上，在我们的样本中，西班牙中小型企业的流动资产占其资产的69.48％，而同时，其流动负债占负债的52.82％以上。
因此，工作资本管理对企业的盈利能力具有重要影响。
Effective working capital management is ___。
risk。
and overall value (Smith。
1980)。
On one hand。
maintaining high inventory levels can ce the cost of potential n ns。
prevent loss of business due to product scarcity。
ce supply costs。
and protect against price ns。
among other benefits (Blinder and Manccini。
1991)。
On the other hand。
offering trade credit can boost sales in us ways。
Trade credit can serve as an effective price n (Brennan。
Maksimovic and Zechner。
1988.Petersen and Rajan。
1997)。
___ during low-demand ds (Emery。
1987)。
___ to verify the quality and quantity of goods received。
文献信息：文献标题：Impact of Aggressive Working Capital Management Policy on Firms’ Profitability（激进的营运资本管理政策对企业盈利能力的影响）国外作者：Mian Sajid Nazir，Talat Afza文献出处：《The IUP Journal of Applied Finance》,2009,Vol.15,PP19-30 字数统计：英文2669单词，14456字符；中文4407汉字外文文献：Impact of Aggressive Working Capital Management Policyon Firms’ ProfitabilityIntroductionThe corporate finance literature has traditionally focused on the study of long-term financial decisions, particularly investments, capital structure, dividends or company valuation decisions. However, short-term assets and liabilities are important components of total assets and need to be carefully analyzed. Management of these short-term assets and liabilities warrants a careful investigation since the working capital m anagement plays an important role in a firm’s profitability and risk as well as its value (Smith, 1980). Efficient management of working capital is a fundamental part of the overall corporate strategy in creating the shareholders’ value. Firms try to keep an optimal level of working capital that maximizes their value (Deloof, 2003; Howorth and Westhead, 2003 and Afza and Nazir, 2007).In general, from the perspective of Chief Financial Officer (CFO), working capital management is a simple and straightforward concept of ensuring the ability of the organization to fund the difference between the short-term assets and short-term liabilities (Harris, 2005). However, a ‘Total’ approach is desired as it can cover all thecompany’s activities relating to vendor, cu stomer and product (Hall, 2002). In practice, working capital management has become one of the most important issues in the organizations where many financial executives are struggling to identify the basic working capital drivers and an appropriate level of working capital (Lamberson, 1995). Consequently, companies can minimize risk and improve the overall performance by understanding the role and drivers of working capital management.A firm may adopt an aggressive working capital management policy with a low level of current assets as a percentage of total assets, or it may also be used for the financing decisions of the firm in the form of high level of current liabilities as a percentage of total liabilities. Excessive levels of current assets may have a negative effect on the firm’s profitability, whereas a low level of current assets may lead to a lower level of liquidity and stockouts, resulting in difficulties in maintaining smooth operations (Van Horne and Wachowicz, 2004).The main objective of working capital management is to maintain an optimal balance between each of the working capital components. Business success heavily depends on the financial executives’ ability to effectively manage receivables, inventory, and payables (Filbeck and Krueger, 2005). Firms can reduce their financing costs and/or increase the funds available for expansion projects by minimizing the amount of investment tied up in current assets. Most of the financial managers’ time and efforts are allocated towards bringing non-optimal levels of current assets and liabilities back to optimal levels (Lamberson, 1995). An optimal level of working capital would be the one in which a balance is achieved between risk and efficiency. It requires continuous monitoring to maintain proper level in various components of working capital, i.e., cash receivables, inventory and payables, etc.In general, current assets are considered as one of the important components of total assets of a firm. A firm may be able to reduce the investment in fixed assets by renting or leasing plant and machinery, whereas the same policy cannot be followed for the components of working capital. The high level of current assets may reduce the risk of liquidity associated with the opportunity cost of funds that may have been invested in long-term assets. Though the impact of working capital policies onprofitability is highly important, only a few empirical studies have been carried out to examine this relationship. This study investigates the potential relationship of aggressive/conservative policies with the accounting and market measures of profitability of Pakistani firms using a panel data set for the period 1998-2005. The present study is expected to contribute to better understand these policies and their impact on profitability, especially in emerging markets like Pakistan.Research MethodologyVariables Used in the StudyThis study uses aggressive investment policy as used by Weinraub and Visscher (1998), who analyzed working capital policies of 126 industrial firms in the US market. Aggressive Investment Policy (AIP) results in minimal level of investment in current assets versus fixed assets. In contrast, a conservative investment policy places a greater proportion of capital in liquid assets with the opportunity cost of less profitability. If the level of current assets increases in proportion to the total assets of the firm, the management is said to be more conservative in managing the current assets of the firm. In order to measure the degree of aggressiveness of working capital investment policy, the following ratio was used:where a lower ratio means a relatively aggressive policy.On the other hand, an Aggressive Financing Policy (AFP) utilizes higher levels of current liabilities and less long-term debt. In contrast, a conservative financing policy uses more long-term debt and capital and less current liabilities. The firms are more aggressive in terms of current liabilities management if they are concentrating on the use of more current liabilities which put their liquidity on risk. The degree of aggressiveness of a financing policy adopted by a firm is measured by working capital financing policy, and the following ratio is used:where a higher ratio means a relatively aggressive policy.The impact of working capital policies on the profitability has been analyzed through accounting measures of profitability as well as market measures of profitability, i.e., Return on Assets (ROA) and Tobin’s q. These variables of return are calculated as:Tobin’s q compares the value of a company given by financial markets with the value of a company’s assets. A low q (between 0 and 1) means that the cost to replace a firm’s assets is greater than the value of its stock. This implies that the stock is undervalued. Conversely, a high q (greater than 1) implies that a firm’s stock is more expensive than the replacement cost of its assets, which implies that the stock is overvalued. It is calculated as:where Market Value of Firm (MVF) is the sum of book value of long plus short term and market value of equity. Market value of equity is calculated by multiplying the number of shares outstanding with the current market price of the stock in a particular year.Control VariablesIn working capital literature, various studies have used the control variables along with the main variables of working capital in order to have an apposite analysis of working capital management on the profitability of firms (Lamberson, 1995; Smith and Begemann, 1997; Deelof, 2003; Eljelly, 2004; Teruel and Solano, 2005 and Lazaridis and Tryfonidis, 2006). On the same lines, along with working capital variables, the present study has taken into consideration some control variables relating to firms such as the size of the firm, the growth in its sales, and its financial leverage. The size of the firm (SIZE) has been measured by the logarithm of its totalassets, as the original large value of total assets may disturb the analysis. The growth of firm (GROWTH) is measured by variation in its annual sales value with reference to previous year’s sales[(Sales t –Sales t –1)/Sales t –1]. Moreover, the financial leverage (LVRG) was taken as the debt to equity ratio of each firm for the whole sample period. Some studies, like Deloof (2003) in his study of large Belgian firms, also considered the ratio of fixed financial assets to total assets as a control variable; however, this variable cannot be included in the present study because of unavailability of data, as most of the firms do not disclose full information in their financial statements. Finally, since good economic conditions tend to be reflected in a firm’s profitability (Lamberson, 1995), this phenomenon has been controlled for the evolution of the economic cycle using the GDPGR variable, which measures the real annual GDP growth in Pakistan for each of the study year from 1998 to 2005.Statistical AnalysisThe impact of aggressive and conservative working capital policies on the profitability of the firms has been evaluated by applying the panel data regression analysis. The performance variables (ROA and Tobin’s q) as well as the TCA/TA and TCL/TA along with the control variables were regressed using the SPSS software. The following regression equations are run to estimate the impact of working capital policies on the profitability measures.where,TCA/TA=Total current assets to total assets ratioTCL/TA i=Total current liabilities to total assets ratioROA i=Return on assetsTobin’s q i=V alue of qSIZE i=Natural log of firm sizeGROWTH i=Growth of salesLVRG i=Financial leverage of firmsGDPGR i=Real Annual GDP growth rate of Pakistanα=Intercept; andε=Error term of the modelSample and DataThe sample of the study consists of all non-financial firms listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE). KSE has divided the non-financial firms into various industrial sectors based on their nature of business. In order to be included in the sample, a firm must be in business for the whole study period. Also, firms should neither have been delisted by the KSE nor merged with any other firm during the whole window period. New incumbents in the market during the study period have also not been included in the sample. Furthermore, firms must have complete data for the period 1998-2005. Firms with negative equity during the study period have also been excluded. Thus, the final sample consists of 204 non-financial firms from 17 various industrial sectors.This study used annual financial data of 204 non-financial firms for the period 1998-2005. The panel data set was developed for eight years and for the 204 sampled firms which produced 1,632 year-end observations. The required financial data for the purpose of the study was obtained from the respective companies’annual reports and publications of State Bank of Pakistan. The data regarding annual average market prices was collected from the daily quotations of KSE.AnalysisTable 1 presents the results of regression model in which the impact of working capital investment policy on the performance measurements has been examined. The F-values of regression models run are found statistically significant, whereas Durbin-Watson statistics of more than 1.8 indicate less correlation among the independent variables of the regressions models. The t-statistics of working capital investment policy is positive and statistically significant at 1% level for Return on Assets and Tobin’s q. The positive coefficient of TCA/TA indicates a negative relationship between the degree of aggressiveness of investment policy and return on assets. As the TCA/TA increases, the degree of aggressiveness decreases, and return on assets increases. Therefore, there is a negative relationship between the relative degree of aggressiveness of working capital investment policies of firms and both performance measures, i.e., ROA and Tobin’s q. This similarity in market and accounting returns confirms the notion that investors do not believe in the adoption of aggressive approach in the working capital management, hence, they do not give any additional weight to the firms on KSE.Table 2 reports regression results for working capital financing policy and the performance measures. The F-value of regression models and Durbin-Watson statistics indicate similar results as reported in Table 1. The negative value of coefficient for TCL/TA also points out the negative relationship between the aggressiveness of working capital financing policy and return on assets. The higher the TCL/TA ratio, the more aggressive the financing policy, that yields negative return on assets. However, surprisingly, the relationship between Tobin’s q and working capital financing policy has been established as positive and statistically significant. Investors were found giving more weight to the firms which are adopting an aggressive approach towards working capital financing policy and having higher levels of short-term and spontaneous financing on their balance sheets.The control variables used in the regression models are natural log of firm size, sales growth, real GDP growth and the average leverage. All the control variables have their impact on the performance of the firms. Firms’size causes the returns of the firms to be increased and it is found to be statistically significant. Moreover, GROWTH and LVRG are found to be significantly associated with the book-based returns on assets which confirm the notion that leverage and growth are strongly correlated with the book value-based performance measures (Deloof, 2003 and Eljelly,2004). Real GDP growth may not affect the returns based on book values; however, investors may react positively to a positive change in the level of economic activity which is in accordance with the findings of Lamberson (1995).The above results contradict the findings of Gardner et al. (1986), Deloof (2003), Eljelly (2004) and Teruel and Solano (2005); however, they are in accordance with Afza and Nazir (2007) and produced a negative relationship between the aggressiveness of working capital policies and accounting measures of profitability. Managers cannot create value if they adopt an aggressive approach towards working capital investment and working capital financing policy. However, if firms adopt aggressive approach in managing their short-term liabilities, investors give more value to those firms. The degree of aggressiveness of working capital policies adopted helps only in creating shareholders’wealth through increased market performance, whereas accounting performance cannot be increased by being aggressive in managing the working capital requirements. The results of this study are somewhat different from those conducted in the developed economies. Pakistan is one of the emerging economies and Pakistani markets are not fully transparent and efficient to fully absorb the impact of information. The study results confirm this state of Pakistani markets.ConclusionThe present study investigates the relationship between the aggressive/conservative working capital asset management and financing polices and its impact on profitability of 204 Pakistani firms divided into 16 industrial groups by KSE for the period 1998-2005. The impact of aggressive/conservative working capital investment and the financing policies has been examined using panel data regression models between working capital policies and profitability. The study finds a negative relationship between the profitability measures of firms and degree of aggressiveness of working capital investment and financing policies. The firms report negative returns if they follow an aggressive working capital policy. These results were furthervalidated by examining the impact of aggressive working capital policies on market measures of profitability, which was not tested before. The results of Tobin’s q were in line of the accounting measures of profitability and produced almost similar results for working capital investment policy. However, investors were found giving more value to those firms that are more aggressive in managing their current liabilities.The study used a new measure of profitability, i.e., Tobin’s q and panel data regression analysis, to investigate the relationship between working capital management and firm returns in Pakistan. The findings of the present study are expected to contribute significantly to finance literature. The results of the present study are in contradiction to those of some earlier studies on the issue. This phenomenon may be attributed to the inconsistent and volatile economic conditions of Pakistan. The reasons for this contradiction may further be explored in future researches.The study also suggests some policy implications for the managers and prospective investors in the emerging market of Pakistan. Firms with more aggressive policy towards working capital may not be able to generate more profit. So, as far as the book value performance is concerned, managers cannot generate more returns on assets by following aggressive approach towards short-term assets and liabilities. On the other hand, investors are found giving more value to the firms that adopt an aggressive approach towards working capital financing policies. The market value of firms using high level of current liabilities in their financing is more than the book value. The investors believe that firms with less equity and less long-term loans would be able to perform better than the others. However, there are various other factors like agency problem which may play a pivotal role in such cases, and so these factors may further be explored in future.中文译文：激进的营运资本管理政策对企业盈利能力的影响简介企业融资文章历来侧重于研究长期财务决策，特别是投资、资本结构、股利和公司估值决策。
An Analysis of Working Capital Management Results Across IndustriesGreg Filbeck. Schweser Study ProgramThomas M. Krueger. University of Wisconsin-La Crosse AbstractFirms are able to reduce financing costs and/or increase the funds available for expansion by minimizing the amount of funds tied up in current assets. We provide insights into the performance of surveyed firms across key components of working capital management by using the CFO magazine’s annual Working Capital Management Survey. We discover that significant differences exist between industries in working capital measures across time. In addition. we discover that these measures for working capital change significantly within industries across time.IntroductionThe importance of efficient working capital management is indisputable. Working capital is the difference between resources in cash or readily convertible into cash (Current Assets) and organizational commitments for which cash will soon be required (Current Liabilities). The objective of working capital management is to maintain the optimum balance of each of the working capital components. Business viability relies on the ability to effectively manage receivables. inventory. and payables. Firms are able to reduce financing costs and/or increase the funds available for expansion by minimizing the amount of funds tied up in current assets. Much managerial effort is expended in bringing non-optimal levels of current assets and liabilities back toward optimal levels. An optimal level would be one in which a balance is achieved between risk and efficiency.A recent example of business attempting to maximize working capital management is the recurrent attention being given to the application of Six Sigma® methodology. Six Sigma® methodologies help companies measure and ensure quality in all areas of the enterprise. When used to identify and rectify discrepancies. inefficiencies and erroneous transactions in the financial supply chain. Six Sigma® reduces Days Sales Outstanding (DSO). accelerates the payment cycle. improves customer satisfaction and reduces the necessary amount and cost of working capital needs. There appear to be many success stories. including Jennifer Towne’s (2002) r eport of a 15 percent decrease in days that sales are outstanding. resulting in an increased cash flow of approximately $2 million at Thibodaux Regional Medical Center. Furthermore. bad debts declined from $3.4 million to $600.000. However. Waxer’s (2003) study of multiple firms employing Six Sigma® finds that it is really a “get rich slow” technique with a rate of return hovering in the 1.2 – 4.5 percent range.Even in a business using Six Sigma® methodology. an “optimal” level of working capital management needs to be identified.Even in a business using Six Sigma® methodology. an “optimal” level of working capital management needs to be identified. Industry factors may impact firm credit policy. inventory management. and bill-paying activities. Some firms may be better suited to minimize receivables and inventory. while others maximize payables. Another aspect of “optimal” is the extent to which poor financial results can be tied to sub-optimal performance. Fortunately. these issues are testable with data published by CFO magazine. which claims to be the source of “tools and information for the financial executive.” and are the subject of this research.In addition to providing mean and variance values for the working capital measures and the overall metric. two issues will be addressed in this research. One research question is. “are firms within a particular industry clustered together at consistent levels of working capital measures?” For instance. are firms in one industry able to quickly transfer sales into cash. while firms from another industry tend to have high sales levels for the particular level of inventory . The other research question is. “does working capital management performance for firms within a given industry change from year-to-year?”The following section presents a brief literature review. Next. the research method is described. including some information about the annual Working Capital Management Survey published by CFO magazine. Findings are then presented and conclusions are drawn.Related LiteratureThe importance of working capital management is not new to the finance literature. Over twenty years ago. Largay and Stickney (1980) reported that the then-recent bankruptcy of W.T. Grant. a nationwide chain of department stores. should have been anticipated because the corporation had been running a deficit cash flow from operations for eight of the last ten years of its corporate life. As part of a study of the Fortune 500’s financial management practices. Gilbert and Reichert (1995) find that accounts receivable management models are used in 59 percent of these firms to improve working capital projects. while inventory management models were used in 60 percent of the companies. More recently. Farragher. Kleiman and Sahu (1999) find that 55 percent of firms in the S&P Industrial index complete some form of a cash flow assessment. but did not present insights regarding accounts receivable and inventory management. or the variations of any current asset accounts or liability accounts across industries. Thus. mixed evidence exists concerning the use of working capital management techniques.Theoretical determination of optimal trade credit limits are the subject of many articles over the years (e.g.. Schwartz 1974; Scherr 1996). with scant attention paid to actual accounts receivable management. Across a limitedsample. Weinraub and Visscher (1998) observe a tendency of firms with low levels of current ratios to also have low levels of current liabilities. Simultaneously investigating accounts receivable and payable issues. Hill. Sartoris. and Ferguson (1984) find differences in the way payment dates are defined. Payees define the date of payment as the date payment is received. while payors view payment as the postmark date. Additional WCM insight across firms. industries. and time can add to this body of research.Maness and Zietlow (2002. 51. 496) presents two models of value creation that incorporate effective short-term financial management activities. However. these models are generic models and do not consider unique firm or industry influences. Maness and Zietlow discuss industry influences in a short paragraph that includes the observation that. “An industry a company is located in may have more influence on that company’s fortun es than overall GNP” (2002. 507). In fact. a careful review of this 627-page textbook finds only sporadic information on actual firm levels of WCM dimensions. virtually nothing on industry factors except for some boxed items with titles such as. “Should a Retailer Offer an In-House Credit Card” (128) and nothing on WCM stability over time. This research will attempt to fill this void by investigating patterns related to working capital measures within industries and illustrate differences between industries across time.An extensive survey of library and Internet resources provided very few recent reports about working capital management. The most relevant set of articles was Weisel and Bradley’s (2003) article on cash flow management and one of inventory control as a result of effective supply chain management by Hadley (2004).Research MethodThe CFO RankingsThe first annual CFO Working Capital Survey. a joint project with REL Consultancy Group. was published in the June 1997 issue of CFO (Mintz and Lezere 1997). REL is a London. England-based management consulting firm specializing in working capital issues for its global list of clients. The original survey reports several working capital benchmarks for public companies using data for 1996. Each company is ranked against its peers and also against the entire field of 1.000 companies. REL continues to update the original information on an annual basis.REL uses the “cash flow from operations” value located on firm cash flow statements to estimate cash conversion efficiency (CCE). This value indicates how well a company transforms revenues into cash flow. A “days of working capital” (DWC) value is based on the dollar amount in each of the aggregate. equally-weighted receivables. inventory. and payables ac counts. The “days of working capital” (DNC) represents the time period between purchase of inventory on acccount from vendor until the sale to the customer. the collection of the receivables. and payment receipt. Thus. it reflects the company’s ability to finance its core operations with vendor credit. A detailedinvestigation of WCM is possible because CFO also provides firm and industry values for days sales outstanding (A/R). inventory turnover. and days payables outstanding (A/P).Research FindingsAverage and Annual Working Capital Management Performance Working capital management component definitions and average values for the entire 1996 – 2000 period . Across the nearly 1.000 firms in the survey. cash flow from operations. defined as cash flow from operations divided by sales and referred to as “cash conversion efficiency” (CCE). averages 9.0 percent. Incorporating a 95 percent confidence interval. CCE ranges from 5.6 percent to 12.4 percent. The days working capital (DWC). defined as the sum of receivables and inventories less payables divided by daily sales. averages 51.8 days and is very similar to the days that sales are outstanding (50.6). because the inventory turnover rate (once every 32.0 days) is similar to the number of days that payables are outstanding (32.4 days). In all instances. the standard deviation is relatively small. suggesting that these working capital management variables are consistent across CFO reports.Industry Rankings on Overall Working Capital Management PerformanceCFO magazine provides an overall working capital ranking for firms in its survey. using the following equation:Industry-based differences in overall working capital management are presented for the twenty-six industries that had at least eight companies included in the rankings each year. In the typical year. CFO magazine ranks 970 companies during this period. Industries are listed in order of the mean overall CFO ranking of working capital performance. Since the best average ranking possible for an eight-company industry is 4.5 (this assumes that the eight companies are ranked one through eight for the entire survey). it is quite obvious that all firms in the petroleum industry must have been receiving very high overall working capital management rankings. In fact. the petroleum industry is ranked first in CCE and third in DWC (as illustrated in Table 5 and discussed later in this paper). Furthermore. the petroleum industry had the lowest standard deviation of working capital rankings and range of working capital rankings. The only other industry with a mean overall ranking less than 100 was the Electric & Gas Utility industry. which ranked second in CCE and fourth in DWC. The two industries with the worst working capital rankings were Textiles and Apparel. Textiles rank twenty-second in CCE and twenty-sixth in DWC. The apparel industry ranks twenty-third and twenty-fourth in the two working capital measuresConclusionsThe research presented here is based on the annual ratings of working capital management published in CFO magazine. Our findings indicate a consistency in how industries “stack up” against each other over time with respect to the working capital measures. However. the working capitalmeasures themselves are not static (i.e.. averages of working capital measures across all firms change annually); our results indicate significant movements across our entire sample over time. Our findings are important because they provide insight to working capital performance across time. and on working capital management across industries. These changes may be in explained in part by macroeconomic factors. Changes in interest rates. rate of innovation. and competition are likely to impact working capital management. As interest rates rise. there would be less desire to make payments early. which would stretch accounts payable. accounts receivable. and cash accounts.The ramifications of this study include the finding of distinct levels of WCM measures for different industries. which tend to be stable over time. Many factors help to explain this discovery. The improving economy during the period of the study may have resulted in improved turnover in some industries. while slowing turnover may have been a signal of troubles ahead. Our results should be interpreted cautiously. Our study takes places over a short time frame during a generally improving market. In addition. the survey suffers from survivorship bias – only the top firms within each industry are ranked each year and the composition of those firms within the industry can change annually.Further research may take one of two lines. First. there could be a study of whether stock prices respond to CFO magazine’s publication of working capital management ratings. Second. there could be a study of which. if any. of the working capital management components relate to share price performance. Given our results. these studies need to take industry membership into consideration when estimating stock price reaction to working capital management performance.外文翻译:对整个行业中营运资金管理的研究格雷格Filbeck.Schweser学习计划托马斯M克鲁格.威斯康星大学拉克罗斯摘要:企业能够降低融资成本或者尽量减少绑定在流动资产上的成立基金数额来用于扩大现有的资金。
中英文对照外文翻译文献(文档含英文原文和中文翻译)The path-to-profitability of Internet IPO firmsAbstractExtant empirical evidence indicates that the proportion of firms going public prior to achieving profitability has been increasing over time. This phenomenon is largely driven by an increase in the proportion of technology firms going public. Since there is considerable uncertainty regarding the long-term economic viability of these firms at the time of going public, identifying factors that influence their ability to attain key post-IPO milestones such as achieving profitability represents an important area of research. We employ a theoretical framework built around agency and signaling considerations to identify factors that influence the probability and timing of post-IPO profitability of Internet IPO firms. We estimate Cox Proportional Hazards models to test whether factors identified by our theoretical framework significantly impact the probability of post-IPO profitability as a function of time. We find that the probability of post- IPO profitability increases with pre-IPO investor demand and change in ownership at the IPO of the top officers and directors. On the other hand, the probability ofpost-IPO profitability decreases with the venture capital participation, proportion of outsiders on the board, and pre-market valuation uncertainty.Keywords: Initial public offerings, Internet firms, Path-to-profitability, Hazard models, Survival1. Executive summaryThere has been an increasing tendency for firms to go public on the basis of a promise of profitability rather than actual profitability. Further, this phenomenon is largely driven by the increase in the proportion of technology firms going public. The risk of post-IPO failure is particularly high for unprofitable firms as shifts in investor sentiment leading to negative market perceptions regarding their prospects or unfavorable financing environments could lead to a shutdown of external financing sources thereby imperiling firm survival. Therefore, the actual accomplishment of post-IPO profitability represents an important milestone in the company's evolution since it signals the long-term economic viability of the firm. While the extant research in entrepreneurship has focused on factors influencing the ability of entrepreneurial firms to attain important milestones prior to or at the time of going public, relatively little is known regarding the timing or ability of firms to achieve critical post-IPO milestones. In this study, we construct a theoretical framework anchored on agency and signaling theories to understand the impact of pre-IPO factors such as governance and ownership structure, management quality, institutional investor demand, and third party certification on firms' post-IPO path-to-profitability. We attempt to validate the testable implications arising from our theoretical framework using the Internet industry as our setting. Achieving post-issue profitability in a timely manner is of particular interest for Internet IPO firms since they are predominantly unprofitable at the time of going public and are typically characterized by high cash burn rates thereby raising questions regarding their long-term economic viability. Since there is a repeated tendency for high technology firms in various emerging sectors of the economy to go public in waves amid investor optimism followed by disappointing performance, insights gained from a study of factors that influence the path-to-profitability of Internet IPO firms will help increase our understanding of the development path and long-term economic viability of entrepreneurial firms in emerging, high technology industries.2. IntroductionThe past few decades have witnessed the formation and development of several vitallyimportant technologically oriented emerging industries such as disk drive, biotechnology, and most recently the Internet industry. Entrepreneurial firms in such knowledge intensive industries are increasingly going public earlier in their life cycle while there is still a great deal of uncertainty and information asymmetry regarding their future prospects (Janey and Folta, 2006). A natural consequence of the rapid transition from founding stage firms to public corporations is an increasing tendency for firms to go public on the basis of a promise of profitability rather than actual profitability.3 Although sustained profitability is no longer a requirement for firms in order to go public, actual accomplishment of post-IPO profitability represents an important milestone in the firm's evolution since it reduces uncertainty regarding the long-term economic viability of the firm. In this paper, we focus on identifying observable factors at the time of going public that have the ability to influence the likelihood and timing of attaining post-IPO profitability by Internet firms. We restrict our study to the Internet industry since it represents a natural setting to study the long-term economic viability of an emerging industry where firms tend to go public when they are predominantly unprofitable and where there is considerably uncertainty and information asymmetry regarding their future prospects.4The attainment of post-IPO profitability assumes significance since the IPO event does not provide the same level of legitimizing differentiation that it did in the past as sustained profitability is no longer a prerequisite to go public particularly in periods where the market is favorably inclined towards investments rather than demonstration of profitability (Stuartet al., 1999; Janey and Folta, 2006). During the Internet boom, investors readily accepted the mantra of “growth at all costs” and enthusiastically bid up the post-IPO offering prices to irrational levels (Lange et al., 2001). In fact, investor focus on the promise of growth rather than profitability resulted in Internet start-ups being viewed differently from typical new ventures in that they were able to marshal substantial resources virtually independent of performance benchmarks (Mudambi and Treichel, 2005).Since the Internet bubble burst in April 2000, venture capital funds dried up and many firms that had successful IPOs went bankrupt or faced severe liquidity problems (Chang, 2004). Consequently, investors' attention shifted from their previously singular focus on growth prospects to the question of profitability with their new mantrabeing “path-to- profitability.” As such, market participants focused on not just whe ther the IPO firm wouldbe able to achieve profitability but also “when” or “how soon.” IPO firms unable to credibly demonstrate a clear path-to-profitability were swiftly punished with steeply lower valuations and consequently faced significantly higher financing constraints. Since cash flow negative firms are not yet self sufficient and, therefore, dependent on external financing to continue to operate, the inability to raise additional capital results in a vicious cycle of events that can quickly lead to delisting and even bankruptcy.5 Therefore, the actual attainment of post-IPO profitability represents an important milestone in the evolution of an IPO firm providing it with legitimacy and signaling its ability to remain economically viable through the ups and downs associated with changing capital market conditions. The theoretical framework supporting our analysis draws from signaling and agency theories as they relate to IPO firms. In our study, signaling theory provides the theoretical basis to evaluate the signaling impact of factors such as management quality, third party certification, institutional investor demand, and pre-IPO valuation uncertainty on the path-to-profitability. Similarly, agency theory provides the theoretical foundations to allow us to examine the impact of governance structure and change in top management ownership at the time of going public on the probability of achieving the post-IPO profitability milestone. Our empirical analysis is based on the hazard analysis methodology to identify the determinants of the probability of becoming profitable as a function of time for a sample of 160 Internet IPOs issued during the period 1996–2000.Our study makes several contributions. First, we construct a theoretical framework based on agency and signaling theories to identify factors that may influence the path-to- profitability of IPO firms. Second, we provide empirical evidence on the economic viability of newly public firms (path-to-profitability and firm survival) in the Internet industry. Third, we add to the theoretical and empirical entrepreneurship literature that has focused on factors influencing the ability of entrepreneurial firms to achieve critical milestones during the transition from private to public ownership. While previous studies have focused on milestones during the private phase of firm development such as receipt of VC funding and successful completion of a public offering (Chang, 2004; Dimov and Shepherd, 2005; Beckman et al., 2007), our study extends this literature by focusing on post-IPOmilestones. Finally, extant empirical evidence indicates that the phenomenon of young, early stage firms belonging to relatively new industries being taken public amid a wave of investor optimism fueled by the promise of growth rather than profitability tends to repeat itself over time.6 However, profitability tends to remain elusive and takes much longer than anticipated which results in investor disillusionment and consequently high failure rate among firms in such sectors. 7 Therefore, our study is likely to provide useful lessons to investors when applying valuations to IPO firms when this phenomenon starts to repeat itself.This articles proceeds as follows. First, using agency and signaling theories, we develop our hypotheses. Second, we describe our sample selection procedures and present descriptive statistics. Third, we describe our research methods and present our results. Finally, we discuss our results and end the article with our concluding remarks.3. Theory and hypothesesSignaling models and agency theory have been extensively applied in the financial economics, management, and strategy literatures to analyze a wide range of economic phenomena that revolve around problems associated with information asymmetry, moral hazard, and adverse selection. Signaling theory in particular has been widely applied in the IPO market as a framework to analyze mechanisms that are potentially effective in resolving the adverse selection problem that arises as a result of information asymmetry between various market participants (Baron, 1982; Rock, 1986; Welch, 1989). In this study, signaling theory provides the framework to evaluate the impact of pre-IPO factors such as management quality, third party certification, and institutional investor demand on the path-to-profitability of Internet IPO firms.The IPO market provides a particularly fertile setting to explore the consequences of separation of ownership and control and potential remedies for the resulting agency problems since the interests of pre-IPO and post-IPO shareholders can diverge. In the context of the IPO market, agency and signaling effects are also related to the extent that insider actions such as increasing the percentage of the firm sold at the IPO, percentage of management stock holdings liquidated at the IPO, or percentage of VC holdings liquidated at the IPO can accentuate agency problems with outside investors and, as a consequence, signal poorperformance (Mudambi and Treichel, 2005). We, therefore, apply agency theory to evaluate the impact of board structure and the change in pre-to-post IPO ownership of top management on the path-to-profitability of Internet IPO firms.3.1. Governance structureIn the context of IPO firms, there are at least two different agency problems (Mudambi and Treichel, 2005). The first problem arises as a result of opportunistic behavior of agents to increase their share of the wealth at the expense of principals. The introduction of effective monitoring and control systems can help mitigate or eliminate this type of behavior and its negative impact on post-issue performance. The extant corporate governance literature has argued that the effectiveness of monitoring and control functions depends to a large extent on the composition of the board of directors. We, therefore, examine the relationship between board composition and the likelihood and timing of post-IPO profitability.The second type of agency problem that arises in the IPO market is due to uncertainty regarding whether insiders seek to use the IPO as an exit mechanism to cash out or whether they use the IPO to raise capital to invest in positive NPV projects. The extent of insider selling their shares at the time of the IPO can provide an effective signal regarding which of the above two motivations is the likely reason for the IPO. We, therefore, examine the impact of the change in ownership of officers and directors around the IPO on the likelihood and timing of attaining post-issue profitability.3.2. Management qualityAn extensive body of research has examined the impact of to management team (TMT) characteristics on firm outcomes for established firms as well as for new ventures by drawing from human capital and demography theories. For instance, researchers drawing from human capital theories study the impact of characteristics such as type and amount of experience of TMTs on performance (Cooper et al., 1994; Gimeno et al., 1997; Burton et al., 2002; Baum and Silverman, 2004). Additionally, Beckman et al. (2007) argue that demographic arguments are distinct from human capital arguments in that they examine team composition and diversity in addition to experience. The authors consequently examine the impact of characteristics such as background affiliation, composition, and turnover of TMT members on thelikelihood of firms completing an IPO. Overall, researchers have generally found evidence to support arguments that human capital and demographic characteristics of TMT members influence firm outcomes.Drawing from signaling theory, we argue that the quality of the TMT of IPO firms can serve as a signal of the ability of a firm to attain post-IPO profitability. Since management quality is costly to acquire, signaling theory implies that by hiring higher quality management, high value firms can signal their superior prospects and separate themselves from low value firms with less capable managers. The beneficial impact of management quality in the IPO market includes the ability to attract more prestigious investment bankers, generate stronger institutional investor demand, raise capital more effectively, lower underwriting expenses, attract stronger analyst following, make better investment and financing decisions, and consequently influence the short and long-run post-IPO operating and stock performance(Chemmanur and Paeglis, 2005). Thus, agency theory, in turn, would argue that higher quality management is more likely to earn their marginal productivity of labor and thus have a lower incentive to shirk, thereby also leading to more favorable post-IPO outcomes.8We focus our analyses on the signaling impact of CEO and CFO quality on post-IPO performance. We focus on these two members of the TMT of IPO firms since they are particularly influential in establishing beneficial networks, providing legitimacy to the organization, and are instrumental in designing, communicating, and implementing the various strategic choices and standard operating procedures that are likely to influence post- IPO performance.3.3. Third party certificationThe extant literature has widely recognized the potential for third party certification as a solution to the information asymmetry problem in the IPO market (Beatty, 1989; Carter and Manaster, 1990; Megginson and Weiss, 1991; Jain and Kini, 1995, 1999b; Zimmerman and Zeitz, 2002). The theoretical basis for third party certification is drawn from the signaling models which argue that intermediaries such as investment bankers, venture capitalists, and auditors have the ability to mitigate the problem of information asymmetry by virtue of their reputation capital (Booth and Smith, 1986; Megginson and Weiss, 1991; Jain and Kini,1995, Carter et al., 1998). In addition to certification at the IPO, intermediaries, through their continued involvement,monitoring, and advising role have the ability to enhance performance after the IPO. In the discussion below, we focus on the signaling impact of venture capitalists involvement and investment bank prestige on post-IPO outcomes3.4. Institutional investor demandPrior to marketing the issue to investors, the issuing firm and their investment bankers are required to file an estimated price range in the registration statement. The final pricing of the IPO firm is typically done on the day before the IPO based upon the perceived demand from potential investors. Further, the final offer price is determined after investment bankers ave conducted road shows and obtained indications of interest from institutional investors. Therefore, the initial price range relative to the final IPO offer price is a measure of institutional investor uncertainty regarding the value of the firm. Since institutional investors typically conduct sophisticated valuation analyses prior to providing their indications of demand, divergence of opinion on valuation amongst them is a reflection of the risk and uncertainty associated with the prospects of the IPO firm during the post-IPO phase. Consistent with this view, Houge et al. (2001) find empirical evidence to indicate that greater divergence of opinion and investor uncertainty about an IPO can generate short- run overvaluation and long-run underperformance. Therefore, higher divergence of opinion among institutional investors is likely to be negatively related to the probability of post-IPO profitability and positively related to time-to-profitability.A related issue is the extent of pre-market demand by institutional investors for allocation of shares in the IPO firm. Higher pre-issue demand represents a favorable consensus of sophisticated institutional investors regarding the prospects of the issuing firm. Institutional investor consensus as well as their higher holdings in the post-IPO firm is likely to be an informative signal regarding the post-IPO prospects of the firm.4. Sample description and variable measurementOur initial sample of 325 Internet IPOs over the period January 1996 to February 2000 was obtained from the Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Internet Research Report dated February 17，2000. The unavailability of IPO offering prospectuses and exclusion of foreign firms reduces the sample size to 205 firms. Further, to be included in our sample, we require that financial and accountinginformation for sample firms is available on the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) and Compustat files and IPO offering related information is accessible from the Securities Data Corporation's (SDC) Global New Issues database. As a result of these additional data requirements, our final sample consists of 160 Internet IPO firms. Information on corporate governance variables (ownership, board composition, past experience of the CEO and CFO), and number of risk factors is collected from the offering prospectuses.Our final sample of Internet IPO firms has the following attributes. The mean offer price for our sample of IPO firms is $16.12. The average firm in our sample raised $99.48 million. The gross underwriting fee spread is around seven percent. About 79% of the firms in our sample had venture capital backing. Both the mean and median returns on assets for firms in our sample at the time of going public are significantly negative. For example, the average operating return on assets for our sample of firms is − 56.3%. The average number of employees for the firms in our sample is 287. The average board size is 6.57 for our sample. In about 7.5% of our sample, the CEO and CFO came from the same firm. In addition, we find that 59 firms representing 37% of the sample attained profitability during the post-IPO period with the median time-to-profitability being three quarters from the IPO date.5. Discussion of results and concluding remarksThe development path of various emerging industries tend to be similar in that they are characterized by high firm founding rates, rapid growth rates, substantial investments in R&D and capital expenditures, potential for product/process breakthroughs, investor exuberance, huge demand for capital, large number of firms going public while relatively young, and a struggle for survival during the post-IPO phase as profitability and growth targets remain elusive and shifts in investor sentiment substantially raise financing constraints. Recently, the Internet has rapidly emerged as a vitally important industry that has fundamentally impacted the global economy with start-up firms in the industry attracting $108 billion of investment capital during the period 1995–2000。
文献出处:Enqvist, Julius, Michael Graham, and Jussi Nikkinen. "The impact of working capital management on firm profitability in different business cycles: evidence from Finland." Research in International Business and Finance 32 (2014): 36-49.原文The impact of working capital management on firm profitability in different business cycles: Evidence from Finland1. IntroductionThis paper investigates the effect of the business cycle on the link between working capital, the difference between current assets and current liabilities, and corporate performance. Efficient working capital management is recognized as an important aspect of financial management practices in all organizational forms. In acknowledgement of this importance, the CFO Magazine publishes an annual study of corporate working capital management performance in many countries. The extensive literature indicates that it impacts directly on corporate liquidity ( Kim et al., 1998 and Opler et al., 1999), profitability (e.g., Shin and Soenen, 1998, Deloof, 2003, Lazaridis and Tryfonidis, 2006 and Ukaegbu, 2014), and solvency (e.g.,Berryman, 1983 and Peel and Wilson, 1994).It is reasonable to assume that economy-wide fluctuations exogenous to the operations of the firm play an important role in the demand for firms’ products and any financing decision. Korajczyk and Levy (2003), for instance, suggest that firms time debt issuance based on economic conditions. Also, given that retained earnings are a significant component of working capital, business cycles can be said to affect all enterprises financing source through its effect on economic growth and sales. For example, when company sales weaken it engenders earning declines, thereby, affecting an important source of working capital. The recent global economic downturn with crimping consumer demand is an excellent example of this. The crisis,characterized by plummeting sales, put a squeeze on corporate revenues and profit margins, and subsequently, working capital requirements. This has brought renewed focus on working capital management at companies all over the world.The literature on working capital, however, only includes a handful of studies examining the impact of the business cycle on working capital. An early study by Merville and Tavis (1973) examined the relationship between firm working capital policies and business cycle. More recent studies have investigated the degree to which firms’ reliance on bank borrowing to finance working capital is cyclical (Einarsson and Marquis, 2001), the significance of firms’ external dependence for financing needs on the link between industry growth and business the cycle in the short term (Braun and Larrain, 2005), and the influence of business indicators on the determinants of working capital management (Chiou et al., 2006). These studies have independently linked working capital to corporate profitability and the business cycle. No study, to the best of our knowledge, has examined the simultaneous working capital–profitability and business cycle effects. There is therefore a substantial gap in the literature which this paper seeks to fill. Firms may have an optimal level of working capital that maximizes their value. However, optimal levels may change to reflect business conditions. Consequently, we contribute to the literature by re-examining the relationship between working capital management and corporate profitability by investigating the role business cycle plays in this relationship.We investigate this important relationship using a sample of firms listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange and an extended study period of 18 years, between 1990 and 2008. Finnish firms tend to react strongly to changes in the business cycle, a characteristic that can be observed from the volatility of the Nasdaq OMX Helsinki stock index. The index usually declines quickly in poor economic states, but also makes fast recoveries. Finland, therefore, presents an excellent representative example of how the working capital–profitability relationship may change in different economic states. The choice of Finland is also significant as it also offers a representative Nordic perspective of this important working capital–profitability relationship. Hitherto no academic study has examined the workingcapital–profitability relationship in the Nordic region, to the best of our knowledge. Surveys on working capital management in the Nordic region carried out by Danske Bank and Ernst & Young in 2009 show, however, that many companies rated their working capital management performance as average, with a growing focus on optimizing working capital in the future. The surveys are, however, silent on how this average performance affected profitability. This gives further impetus for our study.Our results point to a number of interesting findings. First, we find that firms can enhance their profitability by increasing working capital efficiency. This is a significant result because many Nordic firms find it hard to turn good policy intentions on working capital management into reality (Ernst and Young, 2009). Economically, firms may gain by paying increasing attention to efficient working capital practices. Our empirical finding, therefore, should motivate firms to implement new work processes as a matter of necessity. We also found that working capital management is relatively more important in low economic states than in the economic boom state, implying working capital management should be included in firms’ financial planning. This finding corroborates evidence from the survey results in the Nordic region. Specifically, the survey results by Ernst and Young (2009) indicate that the largest potential for improvement in working capital could be found within the optimization of internal processes. This suggests that this area is not prioritized in times of business growth which is typical of the general economic expansion periods and is exposed in economic downturns.The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents a brief review of the literature presents the hypotheses for empirical testing. Sections 3 and 4 discuss data and models to be estimated. The empirical results are presented in Section 5 and Section 6 concludes.2. Related literature and hypotheses2.1. Literature reviewMany firms have invested significant amounts in working capital and a number of studies have examined the determinants of this investment. For example Kim et al. (1998) and Opler et al. (1999), Chiou et al. (2006) and D’Mello et al. (2008) find thatthe availability of external financing is a determinant of liquidity. Thus restricted access to capital markets requires firms to hold larger cash reserves. Other studies show that firms with weaker corporate governance structures hold smaller cash reserves (Harford et al., 2008). Furthermore firms with excess cash holding as well as weak shareholder rights undertake more acquisitions. However there is a higher likelihood of value-decreasing acquisitions (Harford, 1999). Kieschnick and Laplante (2012) provide evidence linking working capital management to shareholder wealth. They find that the incremental dollar invested in net operating capital is less valuable than the incremental dollar held in cash for the average firm. The findings reported in the paper further suggest that the valuation of the incremental dollar invested in net operating working is significantly influenced by a firm's future sales expectations, its debt load, its financial constraints, and its bankruptcy risk. Further the value of the incremental dollar extended in credit to one's customers has a greater effect on shareholder wealth than the incremental dollar invested in inventories for the average firm. Taken together the results indicate the significance of working capital management to the firm's residual claimants, and how financing impacts these effects.A thin thread of the literature links business cycles to working capital. In a theoretical model, Merville and Tavis (1973) posit that investment and financing decisions relating to working capital should be made in chorus as components of each impact on the optimal policies of the others. The optimal working capital policy of the firm is, therefore, made within a systems context, components of which are related spatially over time in a chance-constrained format. Uncertainty in the wider business environment directly affects the system. For example, short run demand fluctuations disrupt anticipated incoming cash flows, and the collection of receivables faces increased uncertainty. The model provides a structure enabling corporate managers to solve complex inventory and credit policies for short term financial planning.In an empirical study, Einarsson and Marquis (2001) find that the degree to which companies rely on bank financing to cover their working capital requirements in the U.S. is countercyclical; it increases as the state of the economy weakens. Furthermore, Braun and Larrain (2005) find that high working capital requirementsar e a key determinant of a business’ dependence on external financing. They show that firms that are highly dependent on external financing are more affected by recessions, and should take more precautions in preparing for declines in the economic environment, including ensuring a secure level of working capital reserves during times of crisis. Additionally, Chiou et al. (2006) recognize the importance of the state of the economy and includes business indicators in their study of working capital determinants. They find a positive relationship between business indicator and working capital requirements.The relationship between profitability and working capital management in various markets has also attracted intense interest. In a comprehensive study, Shin and Soenen (1998) document a strong inverse relationship between working capital efficiency and profitability across U.S. industries. This inverse relationship is supported by Deloof (2003), Lazaridis and Tryfonidis (2006), and Garcia-Teruel and Martinez-Solano (2007)for Belgian non-financial firms, Greek listed firms, and Spanish small and medium size enterprises (SME), respectively. There are, however, significant divergences in the results relating to the effect of the various components of working capital on profitability. For example, whereas Deloof (2003) find a negative and statistically significant relationship between account payable and profitability, Garcia-Teruel and Martinez-Solano (2007) find no such measurable influences in a sample of Spanish SMEs.2.2. Hypotheses developmentThe cash conversion cycle (CCC), a useful and comprehensive measure of working capital management, has been widely used in the literature (see for example Deloof, 2003 and Gill et al., 2010). The CCC, measured in days, is the length of time between a company's expenditure for the procurement of raw materials and the collection of sales of finished goods. We adopt this as our measure of working capital management in this study. Previous studies have established a link between profitability and the CCC in different countries and market segments.Efficient working capital management practices aims to shorten the CCC to optimize to levels that best suites the requirements of the specific company (Hager,1976). A short CCC indicates quick collection of receivables and delays in payments to suppliers. This is associated with profitability given that it improves corporate efficiency in its use of working capital. Deloof (2003), however, posits that low inventory levels, tight trade credit policies and utilizing obtained trade credit as a means of financing can increase risks of inventory stock-outs, decrease sales stimulants and increase accounts payable costs by forgoing given cash discounts. Managers must, therefore, always consider the tradeoff between liquidity and profitability when managing working capital. A faster rise in the cost of higher investment in working capital relative to the benefits of holding more inventories and/or granting trade credit to customers may lead to decrease in corporate profitability. Deloof (2003), Wang (2002), Lazaridis and Tryfonidis (2006), and Gill et al. (2010) all propose a negative relationship between the cash conversion cycle and corporate profitability. Following this, we propose a general hypothesis stating the expected negative relationship between the cash conversion cycle and corporate profitability:6. ConclusionsWorking capital, the difference between current assets and current liabilities, is used to fund a business’ daily operations due to t he time lag between buying raw materials for production and receiving funds from the sale of the final product. With vast amounts invested in working capital, it can be expected that the management of these assets would significantly affect the profitability of a company. Consequently, companies strive to achieve optimize levels of working capital by paying bills as late as possible, turning over inventories quickly, and collecting on account receivables quickly. The optimal level, though, may vary to reflect business conditions. This study examines the role business cycle plays in the working capital-corporate profitability relationship using a sample of Finnish listed companies from years 1990 to 2008.We utilize the cash conversion cycle (CCC), defined as the length of time between a company's expenditure for the procurement of raw materials and the collection of sales of finished goods, as our measure of working capital. We further make use of 2 measures of profitability, return on assets and gross operating income.We document a negative relationship between cash conversion cycle and corporate profitability. Our results also show that companies can achieve higher profitability levels by managing inventories efficiently and lowering accounts receivable collection times. Furthermore shorter account payable cycles enhance corporate profitability. These results, which largely mirror findings from other countries, indicate effective management of firm's total working capital as well as its individual components has a significant effect on corporate profitability levels.Our results also show that economic conditions exhibit measurable influences on the working capital-profitability relationship. The low economic state is generally found to have negative effects on corporate profitability. In particular, we find that the impact of efficient working capital (CCC) on operational profitability increases in economic downturns. We also find that the impact of efficient inventory management and accounts receivables conversion periods, subsets of CCC, on profitability increase in economic downturns.Overall the results indicate that investing in working capital processes and incorporating working capital efficiency into everyday routines is essential for corporate profitability. As a result, firms should include working capital management in their financial planning processes. Additionally, firms generate income and employment. The reduced demand in economic downturns depletes working capital of firms and threatens their stability and, implicitly, their important function as generators of employment and income. National economic policy aimed at boosting cash flows of firms may increase business ability to finance working capital internally, especially during economic down turns.译文营运资本管理对不同商业周期公司盈利能力的影响：证据来自芬兰1.引言本文研究商业周期与营运资本两者之间的联系,流动资产和流动负债之间的区别,以及公司业绩问题。
