Cash Flow from Operating Activities

Cash flow from operating activities is a part of a company’s cash flow statement that provides the information of the total income generated by a company from ongoing business activities, it’s sources and uses. It is abbreviated as CFO and typically entails the details of the net income from the income statement, net income adjustments and changes made to the working capital.

CFO is also known as operating cash flow and is the first section presented on a company’s cash flow statement. Here, we have explained in and out of CFO including the examples, format and importance.

Understanding CFO Better

As mentioned, usually, any organization’s cash flow statement depicts its cash flow from operating activities in its first section. This practice is followed by Chartered Accountants and auditors worldwide.

Note that CFO excludes three crucial sectors of a business’s finances:

1. Its long-term financial planning and/or strategies.
2. Revenues likely to be generated by such plans.
3. Expenses-both in the short and long terms.

CFO is the undisputed marker of a company’s liquidity and financial strength. It measures how much money (notionally referred to as ‘cash’ here) has entered the firm’s corpus and how much has exited.

It measures the current market situation of that firm’s primary products and services, to give just two examples.

It reflects the following metrics in detail:

• All accounts receivable and outstanding payments from other entities.
• The state of the company’s inventory.
• Changes in cash reserves. These alterations may be negative or positive. A loss-making enterprise may have a negative cash flow.
• All accounts payable to other entities in the pertinent FY.
• Depreciation.

Why is Quantifying Cash Flow From Operating Activities Essential?

Any company must keep detailed records of their financial activities. These records are mostly made public when quarterly or annual reports are released. Since CFO apportions voluminous information on profits, losses, operational activities, and a brief digest of overall corporate efficiency, computing it is crucial.

Here are three reasons why accountants and C-Suites alike lay great stress on CFO:

1. It helps figure out untapped but potential areas of business and possible future expansion.
2. The CFO lays out a summarised roadmap of a business’s core products and services. This roadmap is later pored upon with care to ensure an organisation’s corporate vision is in line with its present business viability.
3. Finally, CFO elucidates a company’s monetised assets. This helps these firms take important and far-ranging decisions on share buyback/issue, paying dividends and reducing debt incurred on interest payments.

Differentiating CFO and Net Income

There are several misconceptions and misinterpretations related to these two terms. Their chief differences are the following:

Cash Flow from Operating Activities Format –

There are two formats to determine this type of cash flow – direct and indirect.

Of these, the indirect method is preferred as it uses the ‘accrual method of accounting’. The calculation starts with the net income and then works backwards using this accrual method. Finally, the CFO for a particular period is computed.

The direct method is a bit complicated. As is obvious, such an organisation monitors and notes the inflow and outflow of cash on a regular basis. Salaries and wages, interests and dividends, (whether paid or collected) and miscellaneous cash transactions are recorded in this method.

Both of these methods have differing formulae for precise calculation.

They have been tabulated below.

The second method is the following.

Cash Flow from Operating Activities Example – 

Some real-life examples of CFO are – Godrej or Usha Lexus specialises in manufacturing furniture, Cognizant and TCS deliver IT/ITeS services and Deloitte and PWC are involved in business consulting.

Note that both direct and indirect formulas yield identical results.

Let us take Apple Inc.’s financial statements for FY 2017-2018. In that year, this giant corporation had the highest income in almost 10 years.

These reports are available on their official website.

Apple had:

1. Net income – $59.53 billion
2. Amortisation + depreciation – $10.9 billion. This section also included depletion but was not expressly mentioned.
3. Outstanding taxes payable – (-) $32.59 billion. This sum had to be repaid to debtors, including the US Government and other investors.
4. Miscellaneous funds – $4.9 billion

Following the direct method,

• Total funds from operations: $42.74 billion.
• Working capital changed/increased by: $34.69 billion

Upon careful calculation, cash flow from operating activities was $77.43 billion for FY 2017-2018.

Following the indirect method,

• Net Income and depreciation stood at $59.531 billion and $10.903 billion respectively.
• Changes In receivables/liabilities/inventories stood at (-) $5.322 billion, $9.131 billion and $0.828 billion respectively.
• Net income adjustments amounted to (-) $27.694 billion.

Using the indirect method formula, the CFO was the same – $77.43 billion.

On a Closing Note

Hopefully, it is now clear why precisely calculating cash flow from operating activities is essential for businesses large and small. Note that CFO is not the last word on many corporate decisions. At times, a company’s Board of Directors (BoD) may overturn any decisions arrived from judging CFO.

One such example is Netflix. Even three years ago, it had modest revenues but very humble profits. Their management stood fast, however, despite advice from financial experts. Now, Netflix is a household name.