外文翻译--雅典证交所营运资金管理和上市公司盈利能力之间的关系

中文 3646 字 原文： The relationship between working capital management and profitability of listed companies in the Athens Stock Exchange Abstract In 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 Introduction Capital structure and working capital management are two areas widely revisited by academia in order to postulate firms profitability. Working capital management has 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 maximization. According to Deloof (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 maximizes 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 suggested that 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 percent. 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 terms. 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 maximize 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 paying. 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 realize 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 value. Successful management of resources will lead to corporate profitability, but how can we measure management success since a period ofcredit 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 equation encompasses 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 analyzed. 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 modeling 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. Data Collection and Variables (i) Data Collection The 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 NACE(Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community) industries from which 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 SA(International Capital SA) database. Our analysis uses stacked data for the period 2001-2004 which results to 524 total observations. (ii) Variables As 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/R(Accounts Receivables)+ No of Days Inventory - No of Days A/P(Accounts Payables) (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 - COGS)/(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 want 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. Regression Analysis So far we established a framework of literature and data analysis in order to investigate the impact of working capital management on profitability. In order to shed more light on the relationship of working capital management on firms profitability we use regression analysis. In the following proposed models we examine the endogenous variable which is profitability (measured through operational profitability as mentioned in section 2 (ii) by equation (7) against six exogenous variables and industry dummy variables. The independent variables are fixed financial assets (measured by equation (5)， the natural logarithm of sales, financial debt ratio (measured through equation (6) and cash conversion cycle. We included in the preceding models industry dummy variables according to NACE coding. However, in order to have the minimum degrees of freedom necessary we used general sectors of NACE categories instead of having a more detailed 4 digit codes (the 4 digit coding gave 77 different categories). Hence the total number of NACE sectors was nine， which resulted to eight industry dummy variables (in order not to fall to what is called the dummy variable trap, which is the situation of perfect collinearity or multico llinearity). Conclusion This paper adds to existing literature such as Shin and Soenen (1998) who found a strong negative relationship between the cash conversion cycle and corporate profitability for listed American firms for the 1975- 1994 period and Deloof (2003) who found negative relationship between profitability and number of days accounts receivable, inventories and accounts payable of Belgian firms for the period 1992-1996. So far we observed a negative relationship between profitability (measured through gross operating profit) and the cash conversion cycle which was used as a measure of working capital management efficacy. Therefore it seems that operational profitability dictates how managers or owners will act in terms of managing the working capital of the firm. We observed that lower gross operating profit is associated with an increase in the number days of accounts payables. The above could lead to the conclusion that less profitable firms wait longer to pay their bills taking advantage of credit period granted by their suppliers. The negative relationship between accounts receivables and firms profitability suggests that less profitable firms will pursue a decrease of their accounts receivables in an attempt to reduce their cash gap in the cash conversion cycle. Likewise the negative relationship between number of days in inventory and corporate profitability suggests that in the case of a sudden drop in sales accompanied with a mismanagement of inventory will lead to tying up excess capital at the expense of profitable operations. Therefore 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 Source: Ioannis Lazaridis and Dimitrios Tryfonidis ,2006 “The relationship between working capital management and profitability of listed companies in the Athens Stock Exchange” . Journal of Financial Management and Analysis, vol. 19， no.l， January-June. pp. 150-159.译文 : 雅典证交所营运资金管理和上市公司盈利能力之间的关系 摘要 在本文中我们调查营运资金管理与公司盈利能力的关系。我们以 131 家在雅 典证券交易所 （ ASE)上市的公司在 2001-2004 年这一期间为一个示例。本文的 目的是建立一种具有统计意义的在盈利能力，现金周转周期和在 ASE 的上市公 司的其他组成部分之间的关系。我们的研究结果显示在盈利能力，通过净营业利 润测算和现金周转周期三者之间具有统计意义。更多的管理者能够为他们的公司 创造利润通过正确处理现金周转周期和保持每一个组 成部分（应收账款，应付账 款，存货）都处在最佳水平。 引言 假定公司是盈利的情况下，资本结构和营运资金管理是两个在学术上有很多 重复地方的概念。营运资金管理已经有很多的方法。一些研究人员研究的是最佳 存货管理带来的影响力，而另一些人则研究的是最适合应收账款管理的方法，从 而导致利润最大化。根据戴鲁夫 (003)的说法，营运资金管理在公司的盈利能力 方面有重大影响。这个结果表明了要实现资金潜在的最大化返回就必须要有一个 确定的营运资金需求。 其他在营运资金管理领域的工作主要集中在例行雇用人员的公司。这些研究 显示那些大公司关注更多的现金管理，更少的现金销售，更多的季节性问题和可 能存在的更多现金流量问题。而小公司则更关注库存管理，少数有利可图的公司 则更多的关注例行的信用管理。这说明了高发展的公司向它们的顾客跟随实施了 一个更加勉强的信用政策，同时它们也以存货的形式捆绑住了更多的资金（资 本）。与此同时应付账款会由于有更好的资源供应商以及拥有向它们的客户转移 财务成本这个优点的金融机构而增加。 根据威尔纳 (2000)所说，尽管贸易信贷要花费明显的更大的成本，大部分公 司还是广泛地使用贸易信贷，而且贸易信贷的增长率 通常超过 18%。另外，威尔 纳说 在 1993 年，美国的公司向它们的客户延长了 1.5 万亿美元的信用。同样的， 戴鲁夫也发现通过比利时中央银行的统计，在 1997 年应付账款占它们总资产的 13%,而应收账款和存货则分别占 17%和 10%。萨莫斯和威尔逊 (2000)的报告中 说，在英国，那些公司部门超过 80%的日常业务交易使用信用条款。 一个公司的现金周转周期和它的盈利能力之间有着强烈的关系。为了追求效 益最大化和加快公司的发展，现金周转周期的三个不同组成部分（应付账款，应 收账款，存货）能够以不同的方式管理。有时候 贸易信贷是吸引新客户的一种手 段，为了赢得新客户和增加更多的订单，许多公司正准备改变他们的标准信用条 件。另外，信用可以刺激销售，因为它允许顾客在支付之前评估产品的质量。因 此它取决于通过授信，独立公司能否在管理营运资金时沿用一种推销的方法。然 而这样的公司它的财务部门将面临现金流和资金流动性问题自从资金分别被投 资于顾客和存货。为了实现价值最大化，应收款和应货款以及存货之间必须维持 平衡。根据派克和程(2001)，信用管理寻求创建，保障，以实现一个高质量的应 收账款投资组合。信用管理政策的选择和实践对企业 价值有重要意义，因此许多 大公司都用应收账款进行重大投资。成功的资金管理可以导致公司盈利，但是我 们该如何度量费用绩效管理的成功，是由于一段时间的授信可能导致的销售收入 和市场份额的增加，同时伴随着获利能力的减少或者相反的情况？既然营运资金 管理是现金周转周期的最好描述，我们将试图在公司的盈利能力和现金周转周期 之间建立一个链接。这个一次等式包含了营运资金管理的三个重要方面。它暗示 如果一个公司停止它的经营它可以持续经营多久或者暗示着在物品采购和销售 搜集存在着一个时间差。最佳存货水平对公司的盈利能力有直接 的影响，因为它 将放开营运资本资源，但是反过来为了回应更高的产品需求，它将投资商业周期 或者增加存货水平。同样的，供应商方面的信用政策和给予消费者的信用有效期 都将对公司的盈利能力有影响。为了理解营运资金管理现金周转周期的方式，它 的组成部分将被进行统计分析。在这篇论文里，我们调查研究了雅典证券交易所 的 131 家上市公司在 20012004 年里营运资金管理和公司盈利能力之间的关系。 这篇论文的目的是建立起在雅典证交所的上市公司的盈利能力、现金周转周期和 它的组成部分之间在统计上的显著差异。论文结构如下。在下 个部分我们将介绍 变量的使用和公司样本的选择。为了测试统计意义，统计描述的结果带有涉及盈 利能力的回归模型（因变量）来针对包括现金周转周期部分的 独立变量。最后， 最后的部分是讨论这篇论文的调查结果和提出涉及有关营运资金管理政策和盈 利能力之间的结论。 数据收集和变量 1、数据收集 收集的数据来自雅典证券交易市场的上市公司。我们选择这一市场的原因， 主要是由于财务报告的可靠性。在证券市场上市的公司对现在利润有一个刺激， 如果那些存在，可以使得它们的股票更加地有吸引力。与上市公司相反，希腊的 非上市公司在目前真 正的业务结果上获得较少的鼓励，通常他们的财务报告不能 反映实际运营和财务活动。隐藏利润以避免上交企业所得税是希腊非上市公司的 一种惯用手法，但是这样使得他们剩下更少合适的样本来分析其中一个可以基于 财务数据的营运资金实践作出的推论。 为了这个研究的目的，某些行业由于他们的活动类型被省略。我们跟随 NACE (欧洲共同体经济活动的分类）的行业分类，那些来自电力和水，银行和 金融机构，保险机构，出租和其他服务公司已被省略。原始的样本由大约 300 家公司组成，而现在将范围缩小至 131 家公司。我们获得的完整数据的最 近的期 间是 2001 至 2004年。一些公司没有包括在这些数据