营运资金管理对中小企业盈利能力的影响外文翻译

本科毕业论文（设计）外 文 翻 译原文：Effects of working capital management on SME profitabilityAbstractThe objective of the research presented here is to provide empirical evidence about the effects of working capital management on the profitability of a sample of small and medium-sized Spanish firms. With this in mind, we collected a panel of 8,872 SMEs covering the period 1996-2002. The results, which are robust to the presence of endogeneity, demonstrate that managers can create value by reducing their firms number of days accounts receivable and inventories. Equally, shortening the cash conversion cycle also improves the firms profitability.IntroductionThe corporate finance literature has traditionally focused on the study of long-term financial decisions. Researchers have particularly offered studies analyzing investments, capital structure, dividends or company valuation, among other topics. But the investment that firms make in short-term assets, and the resources used with maturities of under one year, represent the main share of items on a firms balance sheet. In fact, in our sample the current assets of small and medium-sized Spanish firms represent 69.48 percent of their assets, and at the same time their current liabilities represent more than 52.82 percent of their liabilities.Working capital management is important because of its effects on the firms profitability and risk, and consequently its value (Smith, 1980). On the one hand, maintaining high inventory levels reduces the cost of possible interruptions in the production process, or of loss of business due to the scarcity of products, reduces supply costs, and protects against price fluctuations, among other advantages (Blinder and Manccini, 1991). On the other, granting trade credit favors the firms sales in various ways. Trade credit can act as an effective price cut (Brennan, Maksimovic and Zechner, 1988; Petersen and Rajan, 1997), incentivizes customers to acquire merchandise at times of low demand (Emery, 1987), allows customers to check that the merchandise they receive is as agreed (quantity and quality) and to ensure that the services contracted are carried out (Smith, 1987), and helps firms to strengthen long-term relationships with their customers (Ng, Smith and Smith, 1999). However, firms that invest heavily in inventory and trade credit can suffer reduced profitability. Thus, the greater the investment in current assets, the lower the risk, but also the lower the profitability obtained.On the other hand, trade credit is a spontaneous source of financing that reduces the amount required to finance the sums tied up in the inventory and customer accounts. But we should bear in mind that financing from suppliers can have a very high implicit cost if early payment discounts are available. In fact the opportunity cost may exceed 20 percent, depending on the discount percentage and the discount period granted (Wilner,2000; Ng, Smith and Smith, 1999). In this respect, previous studies have analyzed the high cost of trade credit, and find that firms finance themselves with seller credit when they do not have other more economic sources of financing available (Petersen and Rajan, 1994 and 1997).Decisions about how much to invest in the customer and inventory accounts, and how much credit to accept from suppliers, are reflected in the firms cash conversion cycle, which represents the average number of days between the date when the firm must start paying its suppliers and the date when it begins to collect payments from its customers. Some previous studies have used this measure to analyze whether shortening the cash conversion cycle has positive or negative effects on the firms profitability. Specifically, Shin and Soenen (1998) analyze the relation between the cash conversion cycle and profitability for a sample of firms listed on the US stock exchange during the period 1974-1994. Their results show that reducing the cash conversion cycle to a reasonable extent increases firms profitability. More recently, Deloof (2003) analyzes a sample of large Belgian firms during the period 1992-1996. His results confirm that Belgian firms can improve their profitability by reducing the number of days accounts receivable are outstanding and reducing inventories. Moreover, he finds that less profitable firms wait longer to pay their bills.These previous studies have focused their analysis on larger firms. However, the management of current assets and liabilities is particularly important in the case of small and medium-sized companies. Most of these companies assets are in the form of current assets. Also, current liabilities are one of their main sources of external finance in view of their difficulties in obtaining funding in the long-term capital markets (Petersen and Rajan, 1997) and the financing constraints that they face (Whited, 1992; Fazzari and Petersen, 1993). In this respect, Elliehausen and Woken (1993), Petersen and Rajan (1997) and Danielson and Scott (2000) show that small and medium-sized US firms use vendor financing when they have run out of debt. Thus, efficient working capital management is particularly important for smaller companies (Peel and Wilson, 1996).In this context, the objective of the current work is to provide empirical evidence about the effects of working capital management on profitability for a panel made up of 8,872 SMEs during the period 1996-2002. This work contributes to the literature in two ways. First, no previous such evidence exists for the case of SMEs. We use a sample of Spanish SMEs that operate within the so-called continental model, which is characterized by its less developed capital markets (La Porta, Lpez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, and Vishny, 1997), and by the fact that most resources are channeled through financial intermediaries (Pampilln, 2000). All this suggests that Spanish SMEs have fewer alternative sources of external finance available, which makes them more dependent on short-term finance in general, and on trade credit in particular. As Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic (2002) suggest, firms operating in countries with more developed banking systems grant more trade credit to their customers, and at the same time they receive more finance from their own suppliers. The second contribution is that, unlike the previous studies by Shin and Soenen (1998) and Deloof (2003), in the current work we have conducted tests robust to the possible presence of endogeneity problems. The aim is to ensure that the relationships found in the analysis carried out are due to the effects of the cash conversion cycle on corporate profitability and not vice versa.Our findings suggest that managers can create value by reducing their firms number of days accounts receivable and inventories. Similarly, shortening the cash conversion cycle also improves the firms profitability.From this point, the work is structured as follows: in Section 2, we describe the sample and variables used; in the third section, we present the analyses carried out and our findings; finally, we end by discussing our main conclusions.Data and Variablesi. DataWe obtained the data used in this study from the AMADEUS database. This database was developed by Bureau van Dijk, and contains financial and economic data on European companies.The sample comprises small and medium-sized firms from Spain. The selection of SMEs was carried out according to the requirements established by the European Commissions recommendation 96/280/CE of 3rd April, 1996, on the definition of small and medium-sized firms. Specifically, we selected those firms meeting the following criteria for at least three years: a) have fewer than 250 employees; b) turn over less than 40 million; and c) possess less than 27 million of total assets.In addition to the application of those selection criteria, we applied a series of filters. Thus, we eliminated the observations of firms with anomalies in their accounts, such as negative values in their assets, current assets, fixed assets, liabilities, current liabilities, capital, depreciation, or interest paid. We removed observations of entry items from the balance sheet and profit and loss account exhibiting signs that were contrary to reasonable expectations. Finally, we eliminated 1 percent of the extreme values presented by several variables. As a result of applying these filters, we ended up with a sample of 38,464 observations.In order to introduce the effect of the economic cycle on the levels invested in working capital, we obtained information about the annual GDP growth in Spain from Eurostat.ii. VariablesIn order to analyze the effects of working capital management on the firms profitability, we used the return on assets (ROA) as the dependent variable. We defined this variable as the ratio of earnings before interest and tax to assets. With regards to the independent variables, we measured working capital management by using the number of days accounts receivable, number of days of inventory and number of days accounts payable. In this respect, number of days accounts receivable (AR) is calculated as 365 accounts receivable/sales. This variable represents the average number of days that the firm takes to collect payments from its customers.The higher the value, the higher its investment in accounts receivable.We calculated the number of days of inventory (INV) as 365 inventories/purchases. This variable reflects the average number of days of stock held by the firm. Longer storage times represent a greater investment in inventory for a particular level of operations.The number of days accounts payable (AP) reflects the average time it takes firms to pay their suppliers. We calculated this as 365 accounts payable/purchases. The higher the value, the longer firms take to settle their payment commitments to their suppliers.Considering these three periods jointly, we estimated the cash conversion cycle (CCC). This variable is calculated as the number of days accounts receivable plus thenumber of days of inventory minus the number of days accounts payable. The longer the cash conversion cycle, the greater the net investment in current assets, and hence the greater the need for financing of current assets.Together with these variables, we introduced as control variables the size of the firm, the growth in its sales, and its leverage. We measured the size (SIZE) as the logarithm of assets, the sales growth (SGROW) as (Sales1 Sales0)/Sales0, the leverage (DEBT) as the ratio of debt to liabilities. Dellof (2003) in his study of large Belgian firms also considered the ratio of fixed financial assets to total assets as a control variable. For some firms in his study such assets are a significant part of total assets. However our study focuses on SMEs whose fixed financial assets are less important. In fact, companies in our sample invest little in fixed financial assets (a mean of 3.92 percent, but a median of 0.05 percent). Nevertheless, the results remain unaltered when we include this variable.Furthermore, and since good economic conditions tend to be reflected in a firms profitability, we controlled for the evolution of the economic cycle using the variable GDPGR, which measures the annual GDP growth.iii. Description of sampleTable II offers descriptive statistics about the variables used for the sample as a whole. These are generally small firms, with mean assets of more than 6 million; their return on assets is around 8 percent; their number of days accounts receivable is around 96 days; and their number of days accounts payable is very similar: around 97 days. Together with this, the sample firms have seen their sales grow by almost 13 percent annually on average, and 24.74 percent of their liabilities is taken up by debt. In the period analyzed (1996-2002) the GDP has grown at an average rate of 3.66 percent in Spain.Table IIDescriptive StatisticsROA measure return on assets, AR number of days accounts receivable, INV number of days of inventory, AP number of days accounts payable, CCC cash conversion cycle, ASSETS value of assets in thousand euros, SGROW sales growth, DEBT financial debt level, and GDPGR annual GDP growth.Variable Obs. Mean SD Median 10th Perc. 90th Perc.ROA 38464 0.0792 0.0834 0.0678 0.0041 0.1768AR 38464 96.8299 55.7682 96.2962 22.0945 165.2533INV 38452 77.2140 70.0499 59.3042 6.8692 166.6171AP 38371 97.8090 57.3568 93.8075 24.5344 174.9668CCC 38371 76.3117 90.6413 64.7704 -19.6907 190.2017ASSETS 38464 6955.1090 4461.3940 13308 2718.5 5541SGROW 32674 0.1299 0.3105 0.0862 -0.0928 0.3492DEBT 35237 0.2474 0.1839 0.2306 0.0098 0.5021GDPGR 38464 0.0366 0.0075 0.0420 0.0240 0.0430ConclusionsWorking capital management is particularly important in the case of small and medium-sized companies. Most of these companies assets are in the form of current assets. Also, current liabilities are one of their main sources of external finance. In this context, the objective of the current research has been to provide empirical evidence about the effects of working capital management on the profitability of a sample of small and medium-sized Spanish firms. For this purpose, we collected a panel consisting of 8,872 SMEs covering the period 1996-2002.According to previous studies focus on large firms (Shin and Soenen, 1998; Deloof, 2003), the analyses carried out confirm the important role of working capital management in value generation in small and medium-sized firms. We find a significant negative relation between an SMEs profitability and the number of days accounts receivable and days of inventory. We cannot, however, confirm that the number of days accounts payable affects an SMEs return on assets, as this relation loses significance when we control for possible endogeneity problems.Finally, SMEs have to be concerned with working capital management because they can also create value by reducing their cash conversion cycle to a minimum, as far as that is reasonable.Source: Pedro J. Garca, Pedro Martnez,2007. “Effects of Working Capital Management on SME Profitability ” . International Journal of Managerial Finance. Vol. 3, No. 2.pp. 164-177.译文：营运资金管理对中小企业盈利能力的影响摘要这里提供的研究的目的是提供有关营运资金管理对示例的中小型西班牙公司盈利能力的影响的实证证据。就这一点，我们收集了一组涵盖1996-2002年这一期间的8872家中小型公司。健全的内生性问题的存在的这一结果，表明管理人员能够通过减少公司的应收账款天数和存货天数来创造价值。同样，缩短转换周期现金也能够提高公司的盈利能力。引言企业财务文学对长期财务决策的研究有传统的关注。研究人员特别提供了分析投资、资本结构、股息或公司估价，还有其他项目之间的研究。但是公司作出的短期决策和使用一年以下期限的资源的投资，都代表了一个公司资产负债表上的项目的主要份额。事实上，在我们的示例中，小型和中型的西班牙公司的流动资产占它们总资产的69.48%，同时，它们的流动负债也超过它们总负债的52.82%。营运资金管理之所以很重要，是因为它影响公司的盈利能力和风险，从而影响其价值(史密斯，1980)。一方面，由于产品的匮乏要维持高的存货水平，降低生产过程中可能中断的成本或者可能损失的业务，降低成本供应，并防止其他优势之间的价格波动(布林德和曼西尼，1991)。另一方面，发放贸易信贷有利于公司以不同的方式销售。贸易信贷可以充当有效的价格削减(布伦南,马克辛莫维克和泽迟恩，1998；皮特森和拉詹，1997)，刺激顾客在低需求时获得商品(埃默里，1987)，允许顾客在收到商品时按照协定检查他们的商品（数量和质量），并确保服务合同得以实施(史密斯，1987)，帮助公司同他们的客户加强长期合作的关系(NG，史密斯和史密斯，1999)。不过，公司投资大量的存货和贸易信贷可能使公司的获利能力减少。因此，对流动资产的投资越大，风险越低，但是也使公司的获利能力更低。另一方面，贸易信贷是一种自发的融资，减少了所需资金在存货和顾客账户之间的捆绑。但我们应谨记在从供应商融资时，如果有可利用的折扣提早付款可能有非常高的隐式成本。事实上，根据对折扣率和折扣期间的授予，机会成本可能超过20%(威尔纳，2000；NG，史密斯和史密，1999)。对此，以前的研究已经分析了贸易信贷的成本高，并发现了当他们没有其他更多的融资经济来源可使用时的公司财务和卖方信贷。投资多少在客户、存货账户以及从供应商那里接受多少信用的决定，都反映在公司的现金周转期所代表的平均天数，这些平均天数指的是公司必须开始向供应商支付货款和开始向它的客户收取货款之间的天数。以前的研究已经使用这项指标来分析现金周转周期的缩短是否对公司的盈利能力有正面的或负面的影响。具体而言，斯津和索恩 (1998)分析了在现金周转周期和一个1974-1994年期间在美国股票交易所上市的样本公司的盈利能力之间的关系。其结果显示，在合理范围内减少现金转换周期可以增加公司的盈利能力。较近期，戴鲁夫(2003)分析了在1992-1996年间的大比利时公司的示例。他的结果显示比利时公司能够通过减少未付的应收账款天数和减少存货来提高他们的盈利能力。此外，他发现获利少的公司需要更长的时间的来支付他们的账单。这些以前的研究都将他们的分析研究集中在大公司上。然而，流动资产和负债的管理对中小型公司却显得尤其重要。这些公司的大多数资产都是流动资产的形式。而且，考虑到他们在长期资本市场上获得资金的困难(皮特森和拉詹，1997)和他们所面临的财务约束(怀特德，1992；法査瑞和皮特森，1993)，流动负债是外部财务的主要来源之一。在这方面，埃利豪森和沃肯(1993)，皮特森和拉詹(1997)和丹尼尔森和斯科特(2000)表明中小型的美国公司已经用完他们的债务时使用供应商融资。因此，有效的营运资金管理对小公司显得尤其重要(皮尔和威尔逊， 1996)。在这种环境下，当前工作的目标是为 1996年-2002 年期间的 8,872 中小型企业组成的一个小组提供关于营运资金管理对获利能力的影响的实证证据。这项工作对文学的贡献有两种方式。第一，以前没有中小企业存在的这些证据。我们使用西班牙中小企业中的一个样本，通过较不发达的资本市场(拉波塔，洛配兹西拉内斯，施莱弗，和维什尼，1997)和多数资源通过金融中介机构(潘皮隆，2000)这个特点，在所谓的大陆模型内经营。这一切表明西班牙的中小型企业有较少的外部可替代资源，一般使得他们更多的取决于短期融资，尤其是在贸易信贷上。德米伽克-卡特和马克辛莫维克(2002)建议，国家间的公司经营应该在更加发达的银行系统向客户发放更多的贸易信贷，同时他们应供应商那里从得到更多的资本。第二个贡献是，不像斯津和索恩(1998)和戴鲁夫(2003)先前的研究，在当前我们曾对可能出现的内在性问题进行了健全的测试。目的是确保在实施分析中发现的关系是由于现金转换周期对公司盈利能力的影响而不是相反。我们的研究结果表明，管理人员可以通过减少他们公司的应收账款和存货天数来创造价值。同样的，缩短现金转换周期也可以提高公司的盈利能力。从这点来看，工作的结构如下：在第一部分，我们描述样本和变量的使用；在第三部分，我们目前实施的分析和我们的发现；最后，我们讨论我们的主要结论。数据与变量1、数据我们从AMADEUS数据库中获得这些研究的数据。这些数据由范迪克局开发，里面包含了欧洲公司的金融和经济数据。样本由西班牙的小型和中型公司组成。中小型企业的选择是在中小型企业的定义下根据欧洲委员会1996年四月三号的96/280/CE建议的建立需求而做出的。具体而言，我们选择了至少三年满足以下条件的公司：a）员工人数少于250人；b）销售额少于4000万欧元；c）拥有低于2700万的总资产。除了采用这些选择条件，我们还使用一系列的过滤器。因此，我们消除公司在它们的账户上的不同观察值，诸如在资产，流动资产，固定资产，负债，流动负债，资本，折旧或利息支付的负值。我们从背离了合理的期望的资产负债表和利润表还有亏损账户展示迹象中删除了项目的观察值。最后，我们消除了1%的由几个变量中出现的极值。作为这些过滤器应用的结果，我们得出样本的38464个观察值。为了介绍营运资金投资水平对经济周期的影响，我们从欧盟统计局获得了西班牙的年国内生产总值增长的信息。2、变量为了分析营运资金管理对公司盈利能力的影响，我们使用资产回报率（ROA）作为因变量。我们定义这个变量作为支付利息和税收前的收益比率。作为独立变量，我们通过使用应收账款周转天数，存货周转天数和应付账款周转天数来衡量营运资金管理。在这方面，应收账款周转天数（AR）以365*（应收账款/销售收入）来计算。这个变量表示这个公司从它的客户那里收回货款所花费的平均天数。值越高，说明投资占应收账款的部分越高。我们计算存货周转天数（INY）的式子是365*（存货/购买）。此变量反映了该公司所持有的股票的平均天数。储存时间越长说明对某一特定水平的经营活动的存货的投资越大。应付账款周转天数（AP）反映了公司支付其供应商所花费的时间。我们用365*（应付账款/购买）来计算它的值。值越高，公司向其供应商承诺付款的时间就更长。我们应同时考虑这三个时期来估计现金转换周期。现金转换周期的计算是应收账款周转天数加上存货周转天数减去应付账款周转天数。现金转换周期越长，对流动资产的净投资越大，对流动资产中的金融资产的需求就越大。 我们作为公司规模的控制变量介绍这些变量，销售收入的增长和它的杠杆作用。我们用资产对数规模大小，用（销售收入1销售收入0）/销售收入0来衡量销售增长，用负债的债务比率来衡量杠杆作用。戴鲁夫（2003）在他的大比利时公司的研究中也认为固定金融资产占总资产的比率是一个可控变量。在他的研究中的一些公司，这些资产是总资产的重要组成部分。然而我们的研究集中在那些固定金融资产不重要的中小型企业。事实上，在我们的样本中的公司几乎不投资在固定金融资产上（平均值为3.92%，但是中位数为0.05%）。尽管如此，包括这个变量时结果仍不变。此外，由于良好的经济条件往往反映一家公司的盈利能力，我们使用衡量年均国内生产总值增长的变量GDPGR来控制经济周期的进展。3、样本的描述表格II提供了关于使用这些变量对作为一个整体的样本的描述性统计信息。这些一般都是资产超过600万欧元的小企业；它们的资产回报率约为8%；它们的应收账款周转天数约为96天；应付账款周转天数非常相似，约为97天。和这些一起，样本公司的销售增长每年平均将近13%，它们负债中的24.74%通过借款还清。在分析期间（1996-2002），西班牙国内生产总值以平均3.66%的增长率增长。表 II描述统计信息ROA为资产回报率, AR为应收账款周转天数, INV为存货周转天数, AP为应付账款周转天数, CCC为现金转换周期, ASSETS资产价值单位为千欧元, SGROW为销售增长, DEBT财务杠杆, GDPGR 年均GDP增长.变量 观察值 平均值 SD 中位数 10th Perc. 90th Perc.ROA 38464 0.0792 0.0834 0.0678 0.0041 0.1768AR 38464 96.8299 55.7682 96.2962 22.0945 165.2533INV 38452 77.2140 70.0499 59.3042 6.8692 166.6171AP 38371 97.8090 57.3568 93.8075 24.5344 174.9668CCC 38371 76.3117 90.6413 64.7704 -19.6907 190.2017ASSETS 38464 6955.1090 4461.3940 13308 2718.5 5541SGROW 32674 0.1299 0.3105 0.0862 -0.0928 0.3492DEBT 35237 0.2474 0.1839 0.2306 0.0098 0.5021GDPGR 38464 0.0366 0.0075 0.0420 0.0240 0.0430结论营运资金管理在是小型和中型企业的情况下尤其重要。这些公司的大多数资产是流动资产的形式。而且，流动负债是他们的主要外部资金来源之一。在这种情况下，当前的目标是提供西班牙中小型公司营运资金管理对公司盈利能力的影响的实证证据的样本。为此，我们收集了涵盖1996-2002年期间组成的一个小组的8872家中小型公司。根据以前的研究重点都集中在大型公司(斯津和索恩，1998；戴鲁夫，2003)，这次分析的实施确定了中小型公司营运资金管理在价值产生的重要作用。我们发现一个中小型企业的盈利能力和它的应收账款天数和存货天数存在着重大的负面关系。然而我们不能确认应付账款天数是否影响一个中小型企业在资产上的收益率，就像当我们控制可能产生的内在性问题时这样的关系就失去了它的意义。最后，中小型企业要密切关注营运资金管理，因为它们能够通过减少现金转换周期使其达到最低限度并达到合理来创造价值。出处: 西佩德罗.J. 加西亚&佩德罗. 马丁内斯，营运资金管理对中小企业盈利能力影响,国际财务管理.2007(2): 164-177.