CFO just published the 2016 working capital survey by REL Consulting. The 1,000
large U.S. companies included in the survey had about $1 trillion in
excess working capital based on companies in the survey matching the top
quartile performers. Overall, the cash conversion cycle increased by 2.5 days,
although much of this was driven by the oil & gas sector. If this sector was
excluded, the cash conversion cycle actually fell by .1 day.
The best performer in the cash conversion cycle was Murphy Oil a negative 463 days due to a payables period of 600 days! Some of the other top performers in the cash conversion cycle were Noble Energy (negative 295 days), ITC (negative 282 days), Anadarko Petroleum (negative 245 days), and Apple (negative 66 days). On the other end of the performance scale, some of the longest cash conversion cycles were at United Therapeutics (794 days), Zoetis (344 days), Eli Lilly (277 days), and KLA-Tencor (246 days).
