Working capital management strategies and financial performance: A cause-and-effect analysis

This study attempts to validate whether the working capital management strategies can be considered as the causes of good or bad financial performance of an organization, particularly in Indian cement industry. Whether the decisions of finance managers of Indian cement companies concerning the components of working capital such as account receivables, inventory, accounts paybles, cash holding etc. affect the firm’s performance individually and in total, a sample of 31 Indian cement companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange are being selected and their financial statements are analyzed for a period of 11-years (2010-2020). The findings of Pearson’s correlation coefficient and random effect regression model analysis show that there exists a negative relationship between financial performance measured in terms of return on assets (ROA) and inventory turnover period (ITP) as well as accounts payable period (APP). In contrast, a firm’s performance is not significantly affected by the accounts receivable period (ARP) and cash conversion cycle (CCC). Similarly, it has been observed that liquidity ratios such as current ratio (CR) and quick ratio (QR) have a significant positive association with ROA. Moreover, the size of the firms and leverage are inversely related to ROA but the age of the firms is not significantly affecting their financial performances.