Clarkson Lumber Essay

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Clarkson Lumber’s Company Case Analysis GROUP A: ANA GABRIELA SOTILLO JOHNSON FABIAN FREIHERR VON ROSEN IMRE IGNACIO SZAPARY GIL-CASARES RAYAN SEIF STEFAN RADISAVLJEVIC VERENA RIEDHART YANIS ALEM IE business School Section 4 September 2014 Question 1. Evaluate Clarkson Lumber’s financial performance. Can you explain why Clarkson borrowed so much of money during 1993-1995 despite its positive profitability? Although, the Income Statement of Clarkson Lumber seems profitable from 1993 to 1995 by generating positive net income of 60k and 77k respectively. Further it increased both sales and net income by 54% and 28% vs. 1993, but the company has a problem of a liquidity and a shortage of cash. One of the biggest indicators of this problem is almost double decrease in quick ratio in 2 years (Exhibit 1). This means that the company has a decrement of current assets (not considering inventory) comparing to current liabilities by 0.66. Another factor which helps us understand the reason for shortage is Cash Cycle, which consists of Average Collection days and Average Inventory days subtracted by Average Payment days. This indicator is increasing dramatically by almost 11 days in two years, because of increase of Collection and Inventory days by 16 and minor increase of Payables days by 5 (Exhibit 2 and 3). The change in Working Capital (Exhibit 4) very clearly presents the greater increase of receivables than payables, which means that the company pays faster than its customers pays to the company. Therefore, additional source of financing should be found. Further, it is worth mentioning that debt-to-equity ratio increased in this period from 0.82 to 2.65. As a result, it is very easy to understand that the main source of financing the operations of the company are loans and other type of debts (Exhibit 5 and 6). Finally, there is one more factor

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