Cash conversion cycle
What it measures¶
The cash conversion cycle is how many days a company's cash is tied up between paying for its goods and being paid for them. It adds the days goods sit in stock (DIO) to the days customers take to pay (DSO), and subtracts the days the company takes to pay its suppliers (DPO): DSO + DIO − DPO.
Why it is on the page¶
A long cycle means each unit of growth needs more cash up front, before any of it comes back — so fast-growing companies with long cycles often show profit well ahead of cash. A short or negative cycle (customers pay before suppliers are paid, as at many retailers) lets a company grow on its suppliers' money.
Thresholds, their source and the population they were fitted on¶
The page draws no zones: the cycle depends on the industry's terms, so its change over time says more than its level.
- Fitted on: no population — an identity of three descriptive ratios.
- Evidence grade: not graded.
A worked example¶
Celestica, as the Fundamentals page showed it on 9 August 2026 (fiscal year 2025): 69.3 + 66.1 − 52.9 = 82.5 days. Cash was locked up for nearly three months per cycle — working capital the growth panel charges against its rapid growth.
What “No verdict” means here¶
The row carries no verdict of its own. It reads insufficient data whenever one of its three parts is missing; it is never computed from two of them.
What the verdict is and is not¶
The figure describes how long cash was tied up in one year. It is not a forecast and not an instruction to trade the shares.