Components of working capital and profitability in Saudi Arabian companies

Working capital management plays a pivotal role in enhancing the operational efficiency of firms and their ultimate profitability. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the trends in working capital management and its impact on the financial performance of listed manufacturing firms on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE). A panel data methodology was used with different regression estimators to analyze this relationship based on an unbalanced panel of 69 manufacturing firms listed during the period 2007–2016.
The findings revealed that the average collection period and the average payment period are negative and statistically significant for profitability, implying that firms which efficiently manage their accounts receivable and those that pay their creditors on time perform better than those that do not. Additionally, a positive statistically significant relationship between the number of days in inventory and profitability was supported suggesting that firms which stock-up and maintain their inventory levels suffer less from stock-outs and avoid challenges of securing financing when needed. This increases their operational efficiency and ensures profitability in the long run. It could not be ascertained whether a shorter or longer cash conversion cycle enhances firm profitability, since findings to support this premise were weak. However, it was observed that manufacturing firms are on average, carrying lot of debt in their capital structures.
The present study contributes to existing literature by presenting one of the very recent findings on this topic while simultaneously testing the validity of recent local and international methodologies, in order to inform policy change.

The recent development of integrated reporting intends to address the limitations associated with corporate reporting practices. This paper aims to examine whether a statistically significant relationship exists between integrated reporting quality and financial performance. Secondary data was used, namely the integrated reports and annual financial statements of South African banks listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) for 2010–2014. For the period 2005–2009, only the financial statements were used, since integrated reporting was not yet mandatory. The research design was longitudinal and it combined qualitative and quantitative methods. Descriptive statistics and Feasible Generalized Least Square (FGLS) were used to explore the relationships between financial performance and integrated reporting quality. The results indicate that there is a positive relationship between integrated reporting quality (IRQ) and earnings per share (EPS). However, there is no significant relationship between IRQ and Tobin’s q (Q-Ratio), IRQ and return on equity (ROE), IRQ and return on assets (ROA) as well as IRQ and economic value added (EVA). Moreover, there are no significant differences on the financial performance of the listed banks before and after the introduction of integrated reporting.

Working capital management is germane for the success of the banking industry in Nigeria, especially the current state of the sector, which is engulfed with the effect of the global decline in oil price that has resulted in non-performing loans, deterioration of the bank asset quality, laying-off of staff amongst others. This is one of the reasons why the profitability of the banking sector deeply depends on the efficient management of a bank’s working capital. Therefore, the objective of this study is to examine how profitability of banks can be enhanced through the working capital management. To empirically carry out the analysis, panel data which consist of ten (10) deposit money banks in Nigeria for seven years (2010–2016) employing the panel fixed effect, panel random effect and the pooled OLS for the two models, which were used as proxies for bank profitability, which includes return on asset (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) to examine the best measure for bank profitability, with the indicators of working capital; net interest income, current ratio, profit after tax, and monetary policy rate. Results of the study showed that working capital management has a significant effect on the profitability of the selected banks and that return on asset is a better measure for bank profitability. Therefore, the study recommends that there should be a periodic review of the minimum capital base of the Nigerian deposit money banks so as to mitigate the effects of inflation and inculcate the consequence of time value of money, because the purchasing power of one (₦1) naira or one ($1) dollar today would not be sufficient to purchase what it can purchase today for tomorrow.