Snowballing Debt or Valuable Investment?

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Entities, despite profitability level, may become bankrupt if it cannot cover obligations with short-term creditors. Liquidity ratios can be calculated from a company’s financial statements to determine their ability to meet short-term credit responsibilities. In most cases, the higher the resulting ratio, the more apt the firm is to pay their duties to creditors in the short-run (Gibson, 2011, p. 210. Vail Resorts days’ sales in receivables was 22.5 in 2010, compared with 21.7 days in the 2009 fiscal year (MSN Money, 2011). This suggests that the number of average days it requires to collect receivables has consistently risen, conveying a negative trend in the degree of control over credit collection. Most significantly, the number of days a debt is outstanding for fiscal year 2010 has increased by 47% since 2008. However, the extraordinarily high ratio results may not be a particularly reliable measure of liquidity due to the largely seasonal operating nature of the ski resort. The accounts receivable turnover ratio uses net sales and average gross receivable figures to produce a result more indicative of their liquidity. The turnover in 2008 was 24.58 times per year. 2009, according to MSN Money (2011), resulted in a turnover of 18.05 times annually. Credit accounts were reconciled 15.56 times per year in 2010. The negative trend appears to have dissipated when looking into 2011’s fiscal quarters; the most recent calculations show a turnover of 28.83 times (Morningstar, 2011). The primary asset used to gauge the ability to repay short-term debt is inventory, accounting for 28 percent of Vail Resorts’ current assets in 2010. For that year, it would have taken 25.57 days to use up inventory levels based on sales figures. ... ... middle of paper ... ...mbol=US%3aMTN MTN - Vail Resorts Inc Financial Ratios - Forbes.com. (2011, August 31). Forbes.com. Retrieved August 31, 2011, from finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/Ratios.jsp?tkr=mtn MTN Competitors | Vail Resorts, Inc. Common Stock Stock - Yahoo! Finance. (2011, August 31). Yahoo Finance. Retrieved August 31, 2011, from finance.yahoo.com/q/co?s=MTN+Competitors Vail Resorts Inc. MTN Q4 2010 Earnings Call Transcript . (2010, September 23). Morningstar Stock, Mutual Fund, Hedge Fund, ETF Investment Research . Retrieved August 31, 2011, from http://www.morningstar.com/earnings/earnings-call-transcript.aspx?t=MTN&culture=en-US&pindex=8&qindex=11 SEC.gov. (2009, September 24). Form10k.htm. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Home Page). Retrieved September 2, 2011, from http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/812011/000081201109000030/form10k.htm

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