on 04-Jan-2019 (Fri)

Lower inventory on hand need not always indicate better management, for it could lead to stock outages and lose customers. At the same time, a higher inventory days on hand could indicate poor sales and an accumulation of obsolete items.

Current assets includes cash, account receivables, inventories, prepaid expenses and short-term marketable securities. Inventories are less liquid than any other current assets and accordingly will have an effect on the company's ability to remain solvent in the short term.

Secondary sources of liquidity include negotiating debt contracts, liquidating assets, and filing for bankruptcy protection and reorganization. Primary sources of liquidity include ready cash balances, short-term funds (e.g. trade credit and bank lines of credit), and cash flow management.

A high portion of inventories in current assets could indicate that the quick ratio is less than peers. This will mean that the company will have to depend heavily on sales to meet its short-term obligations.

Receivables turnover indicates the average number of times a company creates receivables and realizes them back. This will help the company to estimate when it can receive enough cash from debtors to maintain sufficient liquidity for operations.

An investment policy statement is a high-level document that consists of:
1. The purpose and objective of the portfolio
2. General guidelines about the strategy
3. The types of securities that will be used
4. The people responsible for the portfolio's management
5. The corrective steps to be taken if any violations occur
6. The limitations of the portfolio. (Individual asset class limit may not be mentioned in the IPS.)

Commercial papers are mostly issued by large, creditworthy companies as they can get the lowest cost of financing by issuing such paper. Small companies with poor credit quality usually raise money by selling receivables. Receivables securitization is a higher cost of funds used by companies with poor credit quality. Commercial papers are usually used by non-banking corporates.

If the receivables turnover is significantly higher than the industry average, the number of days it takes the receivables to convert cash should be very low. This is an indication that the company's credit policy may be too strict and that sales are being lost to peers because of this. The average days of receivables are only one component of the cash conversion cycle that is related to the credit terms of the company.

BEY uses the 365-days convention and should be used to evaluate the performance of the security. It allows fixed-income securities whose payments are not annual to be compared with securities with annual yields. MMY uses the 360-dasy convention to annualize the HPY.

Companies with working capital requirements that fluctuate due to seasonal demand are likely to experience short-term shortages of cash and must forecast them to manage their net daily cash positions. They could arrange for a bank credit lines or a capital borrowing program that allows them to raise debt and, once peak season is passed, the company can repay the borrowings using the cash generated from high sales during the peak season.

Discount yield is based on the discount calculated using the face value in the denominator. Money market yield and bond equivalent yield are calculated using the holding period yield, which has price (lower value) in the denominator. So the discount yield is lower than all yields when the security is trading at a discount. The money market yield is the holding period yield times 360 / days to maturity and the bond equivalent yield is holding period yield times 365 / days to maturity. So BEY will be higher than the MMY.

Cash conversion cycle = operating cycle – average days payables outstanding. If the cash conversion cycle has decreased, the company's average days of payables must have increased; this could mean that the company is relying more heavily on credit from its suppliers. This could mean that the payables have increased and ultimately leading to lower payables turnover ratio (purchases/average payable).

Publicly-listed securities should be invested for long periods to make a meaningful return. For short-term investment purposes, bank certificates of deposit and time deposits and other money market instruments can be used.

A revolving line of credit is typically for a longer period and involves an agreement to lend funds in the future up to some maximum amount. Accordingly it is one of the strongest and larger forms of credit for companies. Non-banking finance companies are considered as smaller and of weak credit.

Given the seasonal requirement for cash, it's better for the company to invest in short-term securities that mature in August. Highly safe and highly liquid investments may not generate any return for the company and will not be an effective working capital management strategy.

Committed lines of credit are stronger than uncommitted because of the bank’s formal commitment, which can be verified through an acknowledgment letter as part of the annual financial audit and can be footnoted in the company’s annual report.

Committed lines of credit are in effect for 364 days (one day short of a full year). This effectively makes sure that they are short term liabilities, usually classified as notes payable or the equivalent, on the financial statements.

Leverage increases the volatility of a company’s earnings and cash flows and increases the risk of lending to or owning a company. Additionally, the valuation of a company and its equity is affected by the degree of leverage: The greater a company’s leverage, the greater its risk and, hence, the greater the discount rate that should be applied in its valuation. Further, highly leveraged (levered) companies have a greater chance of incurring significant losses during downturns, thus accelerating conditions that lead to financial distress and bankruptcy.

A number of bankruptcy codes provide in some form for two categories of bankruptcies. One form provides for a temporary protection from creditors so that a viable business may reorganize. In the United States, the US Bankruptcy Code sets the terms for the form of negotiated reorganization of a company’s capital structure that allows it to remain a going concern in Chapter 11. For businesses that are not viable, the second form of bankruptcy process allows for the orderly satisfaction of the creditors’ claims. In the United States, this form of bankruptcy is referred to as liquidation.

The difference between a company that reorganizes and emerges from bankruptcy and one that is liquidated is often the difference between operating and financial leverage. Companies with high operating leverage have less flexibility in making changes, and bankruptcy protection does little to help reduce operating costs. Companies with high financial leverage use bankruptcy laws and protection to change their capital structure and, once the restructuring is complete, can emerge as ongoing concerns.

The goal of effective working capital management is to ensure that a company has adequate ready access to the funds necessary for day-to-day operating expenses, while at the same time making sure that the company’s assets are invested in the most productive way. But Insufficient access to cash could ultimately lead to severe restructuring of a company by selling off assets, reorganization via bankruptcy proceedings, or final liquidation of the company. On the other hand, excessive investment in cash and liquid assets may not be the best use of company resources.

Use of secondary sources may signal a company’s deteriorating financial health and provide liquidity at a high price—the cost of giving up a company asset to produce emergency cash. The last source, reorganization through bankruptcy, may also be considered a liquidity tool because a company under bankruptcy protection that generates operating cash will be liquid and generally able to continue business operations until a restructuring has been devised and approved.

Cash flow transactions—that is, cash receipts and disbursements—have significant effects on a company’s liquidity position. We refer to these effects as drags and pulls on liquidity. A drag on liquidity is when receipts lag, creating pressure from the decreased available funds; a pull on liquidity is when disbursements are paid too quickly or trade credit availability is limited, requiring companies to expend funds before they receive funds from sales that could cover the liability.

Whether a given current or quick ratio is good or bad, however, depends on a number of factors, including the trend in these ratios, the comparability of these ratios with competitors, and the available opportunities in more-profitable, long-lived, capital investments.

Given the various forms of short-term borrowing, it is essential that a borrower have a planned strategy before getting stuck in an uneconomical situation. Many borrowing companies spend too little time establishing a sound strategy for their short-term borrowing beyond making sure that they are able to borrow at all, from any source.

Lower inventory on hand need not always indicate better management, for it could lead to stock outages and lose customers. At the same time, a higher inventory days on hand could indicate poor sales and an accumulation of obsolete items.

A company with low operating leverage will have a low percentage of its total costs in fixed costs. A company with low financial leverage will have a low percentage of its debt as part of capital structure. Debt is considered as fixed financing costs since debt payments are not related to business income; hence a high-debt company is seen as having a high financial risk.

A company borrows $100,000 from a bank for 30 days and pays back $101,000 at the end of the tenure. The bond equivalent yield of this borrowing is:

Bond equivalent yield = holding period yield (365 / days)

Holding period yield = (end / beginning) – 1 = (101,000 / 100,00) – 1 = 1%

BEY = HPY × (365 / days) BEY = 1.00% × (365 / 30) = 12.17%

With 3 / 10 net 30 The cost of trade credit on the due date will be (1 + (0.03 / 1-0.03)) ^(365 / 30–10) – 1= 0.7434 = 74.3%

Business risk is the uncertainty regarding the operating income of a company. This uncertainty is caused by fixed operating costs of the business. So EBIT indicates operating income and is closely monitored for operating risk analysis.

Financial risk refers to the uncertainty caused by the fixed cost associated with borrowed money.

We have to convert the yields of U.S. treasury and CD into bond equivalent yields. The other is in BEY.

Security 1 = discount on U.S. treasury bill = discount yield * (60 / 360) = 0.383% discount = 100*0.383% = 0.383 market price = 100-0.383 = 99.62 HPY = (100 / 99.62)-1 = 0.381% BEY = (0.381) * (365 / 60) = 2.32%

BEY of Security 2 = (0.65%) × (365 / 30) = 7.91%

BEY of Security 3 = 3.65%

So Security 2 (Bank CD) has the best BEY.

Discount yield is based on the discount calculated using the face value in the denominator. Money market yield and bond equivalent yield are calculated using the holding period yield, which has price (lower value) in the denominator. So the discount yield is lower than all yields when the security is trading at a discount. The money market yield is the holding period yield times 360 / days to maturity and the bond equivalent yield is holding period yield times 365 / days to maturity. So BEY will be higher than the MMY.

If a company increases debt and buys back shares with it, the interest expense associated with using debt represents a fixed cost that reduces net income. However, the lower net income value is spread over a smaller base of equity capital (due to the buyback share repurchases), resulting in an increased ROE.