The Effects of Working Capital Managementon Firm ProfitabilityA study examining the impacts of different companycharacteristicsAuthors: Hampus Björkman & Micael HillergrenSupervisor: Lars LindberghStudentUmeå School of Business and EconomicsSpring semester 2014Degree project, 30 HPIAbstractMany argue that there is a trade off between profitability and liquidity. However, manystudies have found that the profitability can increase with an efficient Working CapitalManagement. Correctly allocating cash flows to where and when it is needed increasesliquidity and simultaneously increasing profitability. The purpose of this study is todevelop the research on the relationship between Working Capital Management andprofitability by investigating how it is affected by different company characteristics.A quantitative method was applied with philosophical stances in objectivism andpositivism and deductive theory was used to approach the subject. From the theoreticalframework, five hypotheses were established and statistically tested in order to answerour research question. The first hypothesis was formulated to confirm previous research,while the remaining two aimed at providing both a theoretical and practical contributionto existing knowledge.The thesis centers on the Cash Conversion Cycle, a metric of how fast a company turnspurchased products into profit, with Gross Profit Margin as the measure of profitability.The data analyzed is financial information from 2012, collected from a secondarysource, Business Retriever database. In order to fulfill the purpose, hypotheses weretested. The first centered in previous research of the subject, while two were introducedbased on research of company characteristics. This was tested in a cross-sectional studyon the Swedish wholesale industry, covering a sample of 1,485 companies. Thecompanies were segmented by size and whether they were listed or not. By usingcorrelation and regression analyses, the relationship between Working CapitalManagement and profitability is compared between the different company groups.The conclusion drawn from the study is that there is a positive relationship between theCash Conversion Cycle and profitability, inconsistent with previous research. However,strong significant results indicated that smaller firms are returning a higher profit,regardless the level of Cash Conversion Cycle. No difference was found in thesensitivity to changes in Working Capital Management strategies. This was true also fornon-listed firms, although they were performing worse than listed firms in accordanceto the theory presented. The foremost conclusion from the analysis is the weakexplanatory power of the Cash Conversion Cycle on Gross Profit Margin. A debate istherefore included, discussing the possibility of lurking variables influencing the results.Keywords: Working Capital Management, Cash Conversion Cycle, Profitability, size,public, private, trade credit, wholesale industry, SwedenIIAcknowledgementsWe would like to thank our supervisor, Lars Lindbergh, for the help and supportwe have received throughout the project. We also would to like to thank KennyBränberg for the assistance with the statistical aspect of the thesis.Umeå, 2014-05-22Hampus BjörkmanEmail: hampus.bjorkman@hotmail.seMicael HillergrenEmail: micael.hillergren@gmail.comIIITable of Content1. Introduction....................................................................................................................... 11.1 Working Capital Management.............................................................................................11.2 Problem background..............................................................................................................21.3 Subject choice ...........................................................................................................................41.4 Research gap .............................................................................................................................51.5 Research question...................................................................................................................51.6 Purpose.......................................................................................................................................62. Theoretical framework.................................................................................................. 7
2.1 The Swedish wholesale industry........................................................................................7
2.2 Working Capital Management.............................................................................................9
2.2.1 Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC).......................................................................................................9
2.2.2 Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO).........................................................................................10
2.2.3 Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)..................................................................................................10
2.2.4 Days Payable Outstanding (DPO)............................................................................................11
2.2.5 Gross Profit Margin (GPM).........................................................................................................12
2.3 Cash Conversion Cycle & profitability ...........................................................................12
2.3.1 Summary of previous studies ...................................................................................................12
2.3.2 Previous findings............................................................................................................................15
2.3.3 Company size ...................................................................................................................................17
2.3.4 Public vs. Private ............................................................................................................................20
2.4 Causality ..................................................................................................................................23
3. Scientific method ...........................................................................................................24
3.1 Pre-understandings.............................................................................................................24
3.2 Research philosophy ...........................................................................................................24
3.2.1 Ontological & Epistemological considerations..................................................................25
3.3 Research approach ..............................................................................................................26
3.4 Research strategy.................................................................................................................27
3.5 Research design ....................................................................................................................28
3.6 Ethics to secondary data ....................................................................................................28
3.7 Literature source..................................................................................................................29
4. Practical method............................................................................................................31
4.1 Sample choice ........................................................................................................................31
4.2 Measures .................................................................................................................................32
4.3 Data collection.......................................................................................................................33
4.4 Data calculation ....................................................................................................................35
4.4.1 Cost of Goods Sold..........................................................................................................................36
4.5 Data analysis ..........................................................................................................................37
4.5.1 Descriptive statistics.....................................................................................................................37
4.5.2 Correlation test ...............................................................................................................................38
4.3.1 Regression analysis .......................................................................................................................38
5. Empirical data.................................................................................................................40
5.1 Sample description ..............................................................................................................40
5.2 Descriptive statistics ...........................................................................................................41
5.3 Outliers ....................................................................................................................................42
5.4 Heteroskedasticity...............................................................................................................43
5.5 Final sample description....................................................................................................44
IV
6. Results ...............................................................................................................................46
6.1 Correlation analysis......................................................................................
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