Analysis of the Effect of Working Capital Management on Profitability of the Firm: Evidence from Indian Steel Industry

Abstract

Working capital is one of the important measures of a firm’s efficiency and represents the total liquid assets available with a firm. It reflects a firms’ ability to meet day-to-day operating expenses and also acts as an indicator of a firm’s short-term financial health. So a firm has to plan the effective utilisation of its working capital in order to maintain equilibrium between liquidity and profitability of the business. Therefore, the present article tries to examine the impact of working capital management on profitability of the firms of Indian steel industry. The study has taken into consideration four independent variables, that is, Current ratio, Quick ratio, Debtors turnover ratio and Finished goods turnover ratio which act as the indicators of working capital use in the industry. Return on total assets represents the profitability of the industry and acts as a dependent variable to develop an empirical model in order to establish relationship between working capital management and profitability of the steel industry in India by using panel data regression. The period of study is 17 years, that is, 2000–2016. The result of the study indicates that the impact of working capital management on profitability of the firms of Indian steel industry has been significant.