A cash flow is a real or virtual movement of money:
a cash flow in its narrow sense is a payment, especially from one central bank account to another; the term 'cash flow' is mostly used to describe payments that are expected to happen in the future, are thus uncertain and therefore need to be forecast with cash flows;
a cash flow is determined by its time t, nominal amount N, currency CCY and account A; symbolically CF = CF.
it is however popular to use cash flow in a less specified sense describing payments into or out of a business, project, or financial product.
Cash flows are narrowly interconnected with the concepts of value, interest rate and liquidity. A cash flow that shall happen on a future day tN can be transformed into a cash flow of the same value in t0.
to determine problems with a business's liquidity. Being profitable does not necessarily mean being liquid. A company can fail because of a shortage of cash even while profitable.
as an alternative measure of a business's profits when it is believed that accrual accounting concepts do not represent economic realities. For instance, a company may be notionally profitable but generating little operational cash. In such a case, the company may be deriving additional operating cash by issuing shares or raising additional debt finance.
cash flow can be used to evaluate the 'quality' of income generated by accrual accounting. When net income is composed of large non-cash items it is considered low quality.
to evaluate the risks within a financial product, e.g., matching cash requirements, evaluating default risk, re-investment requirements, etc.
Cash flow notion is based loosely on cash flow statementaccounting standards. The term is flexible and can refer to time intervals spanning over past-future. It can refer to the total of all flows involved or a subset of those flows. Within cash flow analysis, 3 types of cash flow are present and used for the cash flow statement:
- a measure of the cash generated by a company's regular business operations. Operating cash flow indicates whether a company can produce sufficient cash flow to cover current expenses and pay debts.
Cash flow from investing activities - the amount of cash generated from investing activities such as purchasing physical assets, investments in securities, or the sale of securities or assets.
Cash flow from financing activities - the net flows of cash that are used to fund the company. This includes transactions involving dividends, equity, and debt.
Business' financials
The net cash flow of a company over a period is equal tothe change in cash balance over this period: positive if the cash balance increases, negative if the cash balance decreases. The total net cash flow for a project is the sum of cash flows that are classified in three areas:
Operational cash flows: cash received or expended as a result of the company's internal business activities. Operating cash flow of a project is determined by:
OCF = incremental earnings+depreciation=+depreciation OCF = earning before interest and tax*+ depreciation OCF = * +depreciation OCF = * + depreciation* Depreciation* which locates at the end of the formula is called depreciation shield through which we can see that there is a negative relation between depreciation and cash flow.
Changing in net working capital: it is the cost or revenue related to the company's short-term asset like inventory.
Capital spending: this is the cost or gain related to the company's fix asset such as the cash used to buy a new equipment or the cash which is gained from selling an old equipment.
The sum of the three component above will be the cash flow for a project. And the cash flow for a company also include three parts:
Operating cash flow: refers to the cash received or loss because of the internal activities of a company such as the cash received from sales revenue or the cash paid to the workers.
Investment cash flow: refers to the cash flow which related to the company's fix asset such as equipment building and so on such as the cash used to buy a new equipment or a building
Financing cash flow: cash flow from a company's financing activities like issuing stock or paying dividends.
The sum of the three components above will be the total cash flow of a company.
Examples
The net cash flow only provides a limited amount of information. Compare, for instance, the cash flows over three years of two companies: Company B has a higher yearly cash flow. However, Company A is actually earning more cash by its core activities and has already spent 45M in long term investments, of which the revenues will only show up after three years.
