Tham khảo tài liệu tiếng anh chuyên nghành kết toán kiểm toán - phần 4 , tài chính - ngân hàng, kế toán - kiểm toán phục vụ nhu cầu học tập, nghiên cứu và làm việc hiệu quả | Of course, care should be taken in drawing blanket conclusions about a firms condition based solely upon an examination of a single number. Could a firm have negative working capital, and still be in great shape? Yes! For instance, the firm may have a standby letter of credit at a bank that enables it to borrow money as needed to meet near-term obligations. Or, some companies are in great shape even though they have negative working capital. Consider a fast food restaurant that has virtually no receivables (most sales are for cash) and a very low inventory (you know bread and milk dont store well). The only current assets may consist of cash, nominal inventories, and some prepaid items. Nevertheless, they may have current liabilities in the form of significant accounts payable and short-term debt. How do they survive? The velocity of their cash flow may be very fast, as they hopefully turn large volumes of business at high profit margins. This enables the spinning of enough free cash flow to pay obligations as they come due and have money left over to reinvest in growing other business locations. So, you see that working capital is important to monitor. Just be careful about blanket conclusions based on any single measure.
