Impact of Working Capital Management on Profitability among Sugar Manufacturing Companies in India

Working capital management plays a vital role in sustaining a company’s short-term operational cash requirements. For sugar manufacturing companies, the most important component of working capital is inventory. Thus, working capital management is all the more important due to the long inventory cycles they face. The present study examines the impact of working capital on profitability among sugar manufacturing companies in India. The data for the study was collected from a sample of 15 major Indian sugar manufacturing companies, pertaining to the study period 2008-18. The study uses fixed-effects panel regression analysis rather than pooled regression, as the fixed-effects panel regression allows control for company-specific differences in profitability as well as for year-to-year differences in profitability for the industry as a whole. The results of the study suggest that from among the working capital variables, payables was found to have significant negative impact on the profitability of sugar manufacturing companies; and from among the control variables, debt-equity ratio was found to have a significant negative impact on profitability, and fixed assets turnover ratio was found to have a significant positive impact on profitability.