Relationship between working capital management and profit ability: A case of food and drink industry in Vietnam
Abstract
Working capital management has been now attracting the attention of more and more researchers. Although there have been many researches about the relationship of working capital management and firm profitability, there have been so
far many opposing views about this relation. In Vietnam there have been little researches about this issue. Therefore I decided to conduct a study to investigate the relationship between working capital management and firm profitability in Vietnam, especially for the food and drink industry. This relationship is mainly examined using the panel regression method for a sample of 58 food and drink companies listed in Hochiminh Stock Exchange and Hanoi Stock Exchange for a period of three years from 2009 - 2011 . Cash conversion cycle and gross operating income are used to measure the efficiency of working capital management and profitability, respectively. Besides, size of firms, debt ratio, fixed financial assets ratio, and equity beta are used
as control variables in the regressions. The results indicated a highly significant negative relationship between gross operating income and average collection period,
a highly significant positive association between gross operating income and cash conversion cycle, between gross operating income and average age of inventory, between gross operating income and average payment period.