Working capital management and financial performance of Malaysian construction sector companies

This study examines the effects of working capital management on financial performance of construction companies listed in Bursa Malaysia for the period of 2012 to 2016. The findings show that only a shortening collection period and a positive working capital are significant to improve financial performance of local construction firms. An effective working capital management however does not contribute significantly to operating cash flow and share price of construction firms in Malaysia. The findings of this study suggest the management of account receivable is the most critical factor to improve financial performance for the local construction firms.


INTRODUCTION
Construction industry in Malaysia has witnessed an accelerated upward trend since a decade ago due to its remarkable growth in several projects undertaken as well as the strong support of Government initiated by the Construction Industry Master Plan (CIMP) 2006 -2015. The compilation from Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) revealed that the construction sector is the most substantial economic driver for Malaysia during the 10th Malaysia Plan (10MP) from 2011 to 2015 with a high average growth of 11 percent. During the period of 10MP, the Government invested heavily in infrastructure, industrial parks and residential buildings. Among them, the residential construction was the largest market and charted a nominal compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.7 percent supported mainly by the Government's affordable housing scheme. Moving forward, Malaysia's mega infrastructure projects are expected to bode well for the growth trajectory of the construction industry and other downstream industries under the 11th Malaysia Plan (11MP) from 2016 to 2020. These projects include the High Speed Rail, the Pan Borneo Highway, East Coast Rail Link, Bandar Malaysia and Vision Valley, are expected to boost the economy by more than 50 percent to RM2 trillion by the end of 11MP.
Despite the significant contribution of construction industry to economic growth in Malaysia, liquidity has been an issue of major concern as it really gives pressure to firms in managing their cash flow problem. Contractors supervise their projects very closely with the aim to minimise the wastage and optimise the workforce to make sure the scheduled delivery is achieved in time for DOI: https://doi.org/10.37134/jcit.vol9.9.2019 the clients. Nevertheless, the industry has been facing a chronic problem of delayed and nonpayment disputed by contractors. The payment due is postponed until the resolution of the dispute which is generally take a long duration in the court. Delayed payments can stretch working capital and drive a need to finance these payment delays and hence drive up costs that were not factored into the price of the bid. As a result, a working capital position that can provide a short-term financial cushion to construction companies is essential particularly in a fast growing economy like Malaysia.
Working capital involves investment and financing in short term to ensure a firm can sustain longer and increases the firm value in a longer period. This can be achieved through the management and improvement of firm's liquidity. Basically, the liquidity is the result of the time lag between the expenditure for the purchase of raw materials and the collection for the sales of finished products. The components of working capital are inventories, accounts to be paid to suppliers, and payments to be received from customers after sales. The proportions of these components in the working capital change from time to time during the trade cycle and hence affect the financing and investing decisions. It can be implied that lesser requirement of working capital leads to less need for financing and less cost of capital and hence availability of more cash for shareholders. However, the lesser working capital may lead to lost sales and thus a tradeoff between liquidity and profitability may exist.
The popular measure of working capital management is the cash conversion cycle (CCC). It translates the financial information of companies into a tool that is useful in making strategic investment decisions. CCC provides concrete information about the management of cash flows through the management of receivables, the management of inventories, and the use of trade credit. A shorter CCC can be related with high profitability as it implies a company manages and operates the inventory more quickly, collects cash from receivables in shorter time and delays the cash payments to supplier with least negative impact to its own credit reputation.
This study differs from previous studies as it provides the first and a timely analysis to ascertain the relationship of working capital management and financial performance of 40 local listed construction firms for the period of 2012 to 2016. The study is organised as follows. Section 2 provides some arguments on liquidity and firm's performance. Section 3 describes the data and methodology. Section 4 contains summary of the results and discussion, and Section 5 concludes.

LITERATURE REVIEW
The primary purpose of working capital management is to manage current assets and current liabilities to ensure the company always meets its short-term operating costs and short-term debt obligations. Inefficient management of working capital may lead to bankruptcy even though the company's profitability is constantly positive, while excessive levels of working capital can easily result in a substandard return on assets (Mandiefe, 2016). In a simpler way, firms can increase profitability by reducing the CCC. In the long run, management of cash flow is much more important than profit. Investigating changes in working capital is critical to manage firm's cash flow as an optimal level of working capital is the level expected to have maintain positive cash flow position and hence maximise the shareholders' wealth. Vural, Sokmen and Cetenak (2012) examined 75 selected listed companies on the Istanbul Stock Exchange and found a significant negative association between the CCC and profitability. Similarly, Ukaegbu (2014) investigated 102 firms in Africa for a period of five years also found a significant increase in profitability by shortening the CCC. In Malaysia, Kasiran, Mohamad and Chin (2016) conducted a study on efficiency of working capital management to profitability of 24 small and medium enterprise (SME) firms for a sampling period of 2009 to 2013. Their findings concluded a significant positive relationship between working capital management and profitability. Another recent study by Bulin, Basit and Hamza (2016) on 50 listed consumer product firms at Bursa Malaysia between 2011 and 2015 also found a consistent result of the impact of working capital management towards the profitability of firms in Malaysia.
As the cash is the most liquid of all assets, an increase in liquidity from working capital management would increase the operating cash flow of the company and vice versa. Based on 184 companies listed on Tehran Stock Exchange, Rashvand and Tariverdi (2015)  As the management of working capital may have both negative and positive impact on the firm's liquidity and profitability, which in turn, has negative and positive effect on the shareholders' wealth. For example, Raheman and Nasr (2007) based on a sample of 94 Pakistani firms listed on Karachi stock exchange from 1999 to 2004 have found an increase in CCC will lead to a decreasing profitability of firms. Their findings conclude that managers can create a positive value for the shareholders by reducing the CCC to a possible minimum level. Similar findings and implications are found by Dong and Su (2010)

DATA AND METHODOLOGY
The sample is drawn from all the construction companies listed on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia from 2012 to 2016. These companies are subjected to the following selection criteria: the companies must be available over the test period; the companies are Malaysian-domiciled and not foreign companies; the complete set of financial data is available from the Bloomberg. These selection criteria resulted in a final sample of 40 companies which is detailed by the complete data that is required to calculate the CCC such as the account receivable turnover, account payable turnover and inventory turnover as well as the other financial variables such as return on asset and return on equity.
To examine whether working capital management influences firm's financial performance, five alternative regression models (Model A to Model E) are adopted and their associated variables are defined as follow: Model A: Y1 = β0 + β1X1 + β2X2 + β3X3 + β4X4 + ε where βi is partial regression coefficients which represent expected change in the dependent variable (Y) for each unit change in ith independent variable (Xi), ε is the random error. Dependent variable: Y1, where Y1 = EBITDA to Total Asset ratio (%) Independent variables: X1, X2, X3, X4 where X1 = Net Working Capital to Total Asset ratio (%), Net Working Capital is computed as total current assets minus total current liabilities X2 = Average Collection Period (days) X3 = Average Inventory Holding Period (days) X4 = Average Payment Period (days) Kumaraswamy (2016) studied the relationship between EBITDA and net working capital. He found that average collection period and inventory conversion period are significant factors in predicting the firm profitability, followed by the average payment period.
Model B: Y2 = β0 + β1X1 + β2X2 + β3X3 + β4X4 + ε Dependent variable: Y2, where Y2 = Operating Cash Flow to Total Asset ratio (%) Independent variables: X1, X2, X3, X4 Kroes and Manikas (2013) examined the relationships between changes in cash flow measures and changes in firm financial performance. They concluded that changes in both average collection period and average inventory holding period are negatively and significantly associated with changes in cash flow. Average payment period however is not significant to the changes in cash flow measures.
Model C: Y3 = β0 + β1X1 + β2X2 + β3X3 + β4X4 + ε Dependent variable: Y3, where Y3 = Return on Asset (%) Independent variables: X1, X2, X3, X4 Obermaier and Donhauser (2012) found that firms with the lowest inventory level have the worst performance level. Their findings of net working capital to total asset is significant with return on asset is consistent with a recent study by Sheikh, Rafique and Nauman (2016).

FINDINGS
Descriptive statistics for each of the ten variables are obtained in Table 1. The results in Table 1 show that the operating cash flow to total asset ratio has the lowest mean compare to other ratios with a negative value of negative 0.67 percent suggesting a larger expenses or loses on operating activities. The annualised share return has the highest mean of 10.18 percent which is a reasonably high return to investors but with notably highest standard deviation of 36.5 percent indicating the construction industry in Malaysia exposed to a greater investment risk. The return on asset has the lowest standard deviation of 5.48 percent and an average of 4.32 percent suggesting companies are sound in managing its assets to generate earnings. Correspondingly, the net working capital to total asset with a mean of 27.28 percent indicates the strong ability of construction companies in using short-term assets to cover its short-term debt with a standard deviation of 16.66 percent. The average value of long-term debt to total asset ratio is 12.5 percent indicates percentage of assets financed with long-term debt for the construction industry is fairly low during the period, implying a strong cash flow generated by the companies consistent with the strong growth rate of the industry. The average inventory holding period is 436.28 days (or 1.2 years) with a very high standard deviation of 1049.24 days (or 2.87 years) suggesting a severe problem of oversupply and unsold units. The respective mean for average collection period and payment period of 246.33 days and 214 days are considered healthy and normal for construction industry, suggesting working capital management is of great concern for local companies probably due to rising costs in a highly competitive market.  Table 2 show that three models are useful for predicting financial performance of construction firms in Malaysia where the significance F is smaller than 0.05 which indicates the results are reliable. These results suggest that at least one independent variable in each of the Model A, C and D is useful in estimating their respective dependent variables. As such, the null hypotheses of these models are rejected. The coefficient of determination, R-square and adjusted R-square of these three models are above 40 percent, suggesting the variation in the dependent variables can be well explained by the independent variables of respective model. On the contrary, Model B and E are not statistically useful in predicting financial performance of construction industry. As such, these two models have failed to reject the null hypotheses.
A closer examination reveals that average collection period (X2) is statistically significant to EBITDA to total asset (Y1), ROA (Y3) and ROE (Y4), while net working capital to total asset ratio (X1) is significant to EBITDA to total asset (Y1) and ROA (Y3) only. Specifically, the predictive power of average collection period (X2) is negative suggesting the shorter the average collection days in working capital management for construction firms in Malaysia contributes significantly to higher earnings before-and after-tax hence a higher return of equity for shareholders. In addition, the results show a positive net working capital in relation to its total asset leads to a higher earnings before-and after-tax but not a higher return of equity for shareholders. These results suggest the cash flow from shortening collection from account receivables exhibits a more vital role in the working capital management of construction industry in Malaysia due to its unique business nature. As such, the local construction firms should act more prudent in sourcing credible contractors to avoid or minimise the potential problem of delayed and non-payment by contractors.
In contrast, the results of this study show that the length of time holding inventory, payment to the creditors or suppliers, and leverage are not statistically significant in achieving a better financial performance for the construction companies in Malaysia. These results suggest the local construction firms to certain extent are efficient in holding their inventory, managing their payment, and also less dependent on external financing especially through long-term debts.

CONCLUSION
This study concludes that there an effective working capital management is essential to the financial performance of construction firms in Malaysia. The findings reveal that ability to efficiently collect payments in a timely manner is important for construction firms in generating earnings before any contractual obligations must be paid and contributes to higher return on equity shareholders have invested. Within this context, an improved short-term liquidity measured by net working capital does not provides shareholders with a higher return on the amount they invested in these construction firms. The findings further conclude that the power to hold inventory, time takes to pay off credit purchases and long-term borrowings do not exhibit significant impact for construction firms in Malaysia. In addition, working capital management for construction firms does not affect significantly to operating cash flow and firm value measured by the share price. In summary, debtor management is the most critical determinant for the financial performance of construction companies in Malaysia.