Cash ratio
What it measures¶
The cash ratio divides cash by current liabilities — what the company must pay within a year. It is the strictest of the liquidity ratios: it ignores money owed by customers and goods in stock, and asks what share of the coming year's bills could be paid from cash in hand today.
Why it is on the page¶
It completes the liquidity row of the ratio tree, after the current and quick ratios. Few healthy companies keep a high cash ratio — idle cash earns little — so it is read beside the others rather than alone.
Thresholds, their source and the population they were fitted on¶
The page draws no zones: no published line applies, and a low cash ratio is normal for a company with steady cash coming in.
- Fitted on: no population — a descriptive ratio.
- Evidence grade: not graded.
A worked example¶
Celestica, as the Fundamentals page showed it on 9 August 2026 (fiscal year 2025): cash ratio 0.15 — cash in hand covered about a seventh of the year's bills, against a current ratio of 1.44.
What “No verdict” means here¶
The row carries no verdict of its own. It reads insufficient data when cash or current liabilities is not stored.
What the verdict is and is not¶
The figure describes cash against short-term bills at one year-end. It is not a forecast and not an instruction to trade the shares.