receivables vs. payables

I’ve always been a fan of analyzing working capital, which shows the flow of cash in the inventory cycle, from the bank account to raw materials to finished goods to sales and getting paid.

There are lots of standard ratios, but my favorite has always been receivables vs. payables.  Taken in its simplest form this shows how eager people are to obtain the company’s goods (small receivables, which means little financing provided by the company) vs. how eager suppliers are to have the company as a customer (large receivables, which means easy payment terms).

Whenever markets go south, some limitation or other–or some abuse–of financial reporting rules invariably comes to the fore.   This time, for me at least, the culprit is payables.

factoring

I’ve known for a long time about factoring receivables, meaning the company sells them to a third party, getting them off the balance sheet.  Whatever the motivations of management, factoring makes the demand from customers and the company’s need for cash look better.

Until the financial crisis of 2008, financial accounting standards did not require that this activity be disclosed to shareholders.  Since then, as I read the FASB rules, big changes in the level of factoring, up or down, must be disclosed   …but nothing else.

reverse factoring

Something I’m just learning about during the current downturn is reverse factoring aka supply chain finance.  It’s the cousin of factoring, but on the liabilities side of the balance sheet.

This one’s a little more complicated, but there’s a bad case where a company arranges for a bank credit line.  A supplier essentially takes his payable to the bank for payment, creating a loan balance for the arranging company.  But this debt either doesn’t appear, or doesn’t appear in an easily understandable way, in the company financial statements.

This esoteric financing ploy only came to the market’s attention in the bankruptcy of Carillon in the UK in early 2018.   But the recent call by the big four accounting firms for the SEC to clarify what disclosure of reverse factoring must be made suggests that
Carillon is not an isolated case.

My sense is that this is not an issue for most companies but that highly financially leveraged firms may be in considerably worse shape than the reported financials show.  This presents a problem for anyone wanting to speculate on a turnaround in world economies or world stock markets.  The most aggressive strategy would be to bet on the companies that have been pummeled on fears they won’t survive the pandemic-related downturn.  To my mind, however, these are precisely the firms where risk of large “hidden” debt is the greatest.