The Relationship between Liquidity and Firms’ Profitability: A Case Study of Karachi Stock Exchange

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between firm’s liquidity and profitability; and to find out the effects of different components of liquidity on firms’ profitability.The relationship between liquidity and firms’ profitability is empirically examined by collecting the data of 50 listed firms of Karachi Stock Exchange, Pakistan. Panel data has been collected from secondary sources for the year 2007 to 2011 .Net operating income and Return on assets are used measure of firm’s profitability. Liquidity of the firm is measured by using cash gap in days and current ratio. Firm size measured by net sales, total assets and market capitalization .The study applies regression analysis to determine factors affecting profitability. Incremental tests are carried out to see the importance of individual variables in the model.The results of correlation and regression analysis showed that there is a significant negative relationship between cash gap and return on assets while current ratio has significant positive relationship with profitability. Results further indicate that log of sales and log of total assets has positive significant relationship with profitability. The findings of this study are based on firms listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE). Hence, the results cannot be generalizable to those firms which are not listed on Karachi stock exchange. The sample of the study comprises only the merchandising and manufacturing firms. Banks are excluded due to their nature of work.