DSO — days sales outstanding
What it measures¶
Days sales outstanding is how many days, on average, customers take to pay. When a company lets customers pay later, the money owed to it is recorded as receivables until the customer pays. The page computes 365 × average receivables ÷ revenue: the receivables expressed as a number of days of sales.
Why it is on the page¶
It is the first part of the cash conversion cycle. A rising DSO means cash is arriving later for each unit of sales — sometimes a sign of looser credit terms used to keep sales up, which is why James Montier's list of warning flags and Messod Beneish's manipulation screen both watch receivables against sales.
Thresholds, their source and the population they were fitted on¶
The page draws no zones: payment terms differ by industry (a supermarket is paid at the till, an equipment maker in months), so the level matters less than its change over time.
- 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): DSO 69.3 days — its customers took a little over two months to pay.
What “No verdict” means here¶
The row carries no verdict of its own. It reads insufficient data when receivables or revenue is not stored, or for the oldest year, which has no opening receivables to average.
What the verdict is and is not¶
The figure describes how long customers took to pay in one year. It is not a forecast and not an instruction to trade the shares.