by Tim Delaney | Oct 10, 2010
Back in July, we discussed how much progress BP seemed to be making with safety (See “BP’s Safety Warning Signs,” July 11). From 2005 through 2009, the company went from the worst record among the majors to about the best in terms of injuries, deaths, and spills. But,...
by Ron Carleton | Nov 18, 2009
There are lots of measures of liquidity. The classics are the current ratio and the quick ratio, but they’ve fallen out of favor because they don’t include cash flow, a critical component of liquidity. Cash burn is too recent to be classic, even though...
by Ron Carleton | Jun 1, 2009
Microsoft borrowed $3.8 billion in the US corporate bond market on May 11, driving its total debt up to $5.8 billion. But there’s no need for panic. The company had $36.9 billion worth of cash and investments at the end of March, was producing annualized EBITDA...
by Ron Carleton | Feb 12, 2009
We mentioned the absence of early warning signs in our earlier post on Satyam – especially the lack of a gap between earnings and cash flow. It turns out there were a few. We can classify them either as behavioral or financial. Behavioral Warning Signs Behavioral...
by Ron Carleton | Jan 20, 2009
The 2007 year-end selling season was not good for the home furnishings retailer “Linens ‘n Things.” Quarterly sales were up 0.6%, but only because the company opened four new stores. Ignoring the new stores, same store sales were down 1.0% for the...
