Matt Bergman

Working capital is the most underestimated force in business. Let’s imagine you have a business running at $ 500k per month of sales. All of a sudden you experience a breakout moment: - 15% sales growth month-over-month for a year - With a net income margin of 10% Extending that growth will lead to a total of $14.5M sales in the first year and $1.45M net income. Now make some working capital assumptions: - Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) of 30 Days - Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO) of 30 Days - Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) of 30 Days i.e. a Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC) of 30 Days: (DSO + DIO - DPO). Despite the $1.45M profitability, the business won’t generate any cashflow in year one. In fact it will outflow ~$375k of cash over those twelve months as it lays down the additional working capital needed to react to the growth. Now, lets run some scenarios (see the image) assuming that same business starts with $ 1M of cash on the balance sheet: If we assume the same dynamics, but instead imagine the business had poor inventory control, and ran on a CCC of 90 days. That same business would now have a negative cash balance of ~$3m by Christmas… or more accurately would be dead by June. And at that CCC, even if the business 2.5x that net margin to 25%, the business would still run out of cash in 9 months (that is despite now generating ~$3.6M of profit). Now imagine the opposite were true, the business, ran on a negative CCC of 60 days, funded by a willing supplier; with very tight inventory and receivables levels. In this scenario, even if the net margin were only 5%, the cash balance would explode to over $ 5M (positive) by the end of the year. In fact, at a negative 60 days CCC, even if the business operated at a 25% net loss margin, it would still survive the year (just about). This illustrates how much more sensitive working capital (and cashflow) is to changes in the business, than any profit metric you can choose. I call this effect: The Cashflow Megaphone. And as a long time turnaround CFO, understanding this inside out was the most valuable technical weapon in my armory in bending broken cashflows back into the black. And in times of volatile trading and macro conditions, these dynamics are more important than ever (especially when supply chains are gummed up like they are right now)