EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
After the merger chain deals with the Kendalls, Hepworth initiated womenswear stores naming it NEXT in 1981. In 1864 before NEXT, Hepworth launched Joseph Hepworth & Son in Leeds which were tailors for menswear. By 1990s, NEXT had widened their clothing categories while undergoing massive global expansion with its outlets count with their brand trading in around 40 different countries. Today, NEXT stands among the top five largest clothing retailers by sales in the United Kingdom competing alongside Supergroup, Marks & Spencer, and others.
Figure 2: Next showroom image from Next PLC official website (Next PLC, 2017)
INTRODUCTION
The below report holds the comprehensive analysis of the financial position and the company’s performance with five years annual reports and accounts in consideration. Currently, Next PLC has
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To sum it up, from the year 2013 to 2017, the liquidity of business is on the brighter side with the ability to meet its short-term payable liabilities except for the negligible dip in 2016.
Liquidity ratio of Next PLC in comparison with a competitor:
Figure 3: Current Ratio and Acid Test ratios comparison of Next PLC & Supergroup PLC
If the liquidity ratios are too high, it indicates that a business lacks in terms of investments or sufficient usage of resources, while too low liquidity ratio of a business shows their strategy turning to be a threat leading to financial issues.
EFFICIENCY
For a successful business, its necessary to keep a track of how efficiently and effectively are its resources being used. Efficiency ratios help in figuring out this factor by studying the inventories, sales, trade receivables, trade payables for a year.
Analysis 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Inventory Days 49.81 56.29 57.26 65.18
As long as the current ratio, which takes inventories into account, is higher than 1, they do not experience any problems repaying their short-term liabilities. However, the quick ratio is smaller than 1 and has marginally decreased in 2011. Due to this Next Plc might have problems paying off their short-term liabilities if sales decreases in the next years.
Case Study of Boots Plc Boots Plc have various kinds of stakeholders in their business who do various kinds of jobs suitable for which group there are in. Like any other Plc their stakeholders at least have a say in the business depending their role. E.g. shareholders have a bigger say than the employees who have very little say in the business. Boots Plc have the following external stakeholders in their businesses that play different roles between them are: - Ø Pressure Groups
NEXT PLC is a retailing company that primarily operates in the UK, and has been trading for almost 150 years; however, the brand itself was first created in 1982 (Next plc, 2010a). The company offers a range of clothing, accessories, home ware and footwear. The company’s headquarters is located in Leicester, UK and is currently run by Chief Executive Simon Wolfson. NEXT distributes through three main channels: NEXT Retail, operating in more than 500 stores around the UK and Ireland, NEXT Directory, a website and catalogue list for over 2 million active users. And NEXT International, with chains of over 180 stores worldwide including an international website. However, NEXT also
The liquidity of firm can be measured by computing certain ratio’s such as current ratio and acid ratio. For measuring Target Corporation’s 2014 liquidity; the firm’s current ratio and the acid ratio is computed. The company’s current ratio is 0.91 times which is computed by comparing current asset ($11, 573,000) with current liabilities ($12,777, 000) of the year 2014 (TGT Company Financial, n.d). The firm’s acid ratio is 0.26 times which is computed by deducting inventory ($8,278,000) from current assets. The inventory is deducted from current assets because the company has not received any money for the unfinished good or from unsold inventory worth ($8,278,000). To analyze the Target Corporation’s liquidity trend in 2014; the current ratio and acid ratio of 2014 is compared with the 2015’s ratios. In 2015, the firm’s current ratio was 1.20 times and the acid ratio was 0.45 times. These liquidity ratios reflect that the firm’s liquidity was better in 2015 than 2014. (See Table 1).
Analysis of the liquidity ratios of Verizon wireless unveiled the fact that the company liquidity position
Liquidity represents a company’s ability to pay its short-term obligations. In the following schedule is the calculation of the ratios that are indicators of the liquidity position of a company.
The liquidity ratios of the firm are slightly below the industry averages. This is due to inventory and accounts receivable making up a significantly larger portion of the current assets than cash and marketable securities. This may be indicative of a problem with inventory management and/or collection on accounts.
Liquidity ratios measure the short term ability of a company to pay its obligations and meet their needs for maintaining cash. According to Cagle, Campbell & Jones (2013), “A good assessment of a company’s liquidity is important because a decline in liquidity leads to a greater risk of bankruptcy” (p. 44). Creditors, investors and analysts alike are all interested in a company’s liquidity. After computing liquidity
This report is going to use annual report to analyze the Next PLC through multiple point of view for the purpose of advise, and the final user will be the board of NEXT PLC. The report will consist of three parts, firstly, it will illustrate the comparison on performance, financial position and liquidity between year 2010 and 2011, meanwhile compare the same criteria with its competitor - Debenham PLC in 2011. Secondly, Explain and evaluate how the company applies the international accounting standards. In final part, it will have executive summary covering part one and two.
According to the calculation of ratios, the performance of Cryptic plc can be analysed as following. For the profitability ratios, growth in gross profit and net profit both have negative values. Whilst operating profit growth is -8.2% (2013-2014) and -11.5% (2014-2015), net profit growth is -17.9% and -14.4% respectively. It can be seen that Cryptic plc has had a poor performance in recent years. Reason can be come from the increase of costs incurred. Although the growth rate declined between each period, the company still made profit rather than loss. From the net profit growth, the company may start recovering from the downturn position and it is seeking for fundraising to support business operations.
This assignment will analyse and compare the financial performance between NEXT and DEBENHAMS by examining their latest Annual Reports. In order to conclude and comment on these two businesses, appropriate ratios will be calculated through the figures in their business financial statements and the information regarding their industry and market conditions in Annual Reports will also be analysed.
Liquidity In analyzing liquidity of the company, the current ratio is not very telling of a falling company. The company increased its ratio throughout the period of the income statement thus building upon its company assets and allowing for a 6-1 ratio of assets over its liabilities. This implies the company is still able to operate sufficiently even though it did not make its optimum current ratio of about 8-1. However, when one takes the inventory out of the equation with the quick ratio, the numbers show the true strength of short term liquidity. The numbers are still good, and do not indicate failure – but are
The liquidity ratios are a group of ratios that show the relationship of a firm’s cash and other current assets to its current liabilities. This basically means that the ratios measure how well the company is able to pay its short-term obligations and how well they can confront unexpected needs for cash.
First of all it is considered as crucial to find out in which environment the company CHR exists, therefore I decided to use Porter`s five forces model and Pest analysis.
In present era, liquidity and profitability trade off has become very important issue in any organisation. If the firm decreases its liquidity, the profitability of the firm would be high. So the result shows that there is a negative relationship between profitability and liquidity of the firm. So in other words we can say that there is essential to maintain the balance between liquidity and profitability of the