Cash / Debt

Cash to debt

One of the 61 measures in Stock Scorer, under Resilience — Can the balance sheet absorb a bad year?

How it is worked out

Cash and short-term investments ÷ total debt

How much of the debt could be paid off tomorrow out of what is already in the bank. Above 1.0 means the company holds more cash than it owes. A company carrying no debt at all scores at the top: the ratio is not undefined there but limitless.

How to read it

gross debt against gross cash, neither netted. Says nothing about when the debt is due, so a company with plenty of cash and a repayment next month reads the same as one with thirty years

Which figures it needs

Computed from 4 figures taken from the filing:

• cash
• short_term_investments
• debt_long
• debt_short

The XBRL tags behind it

These are the element names looked for in a filing, in order. The first one a company reports is the one used, and the company page names which it was — so any figure here can be checked against the filing it came from.

• CashAndCashEquivalentsAtCarryingValue
• CashCashEquivalentsRestrictedCashAndRestrictedCashEquivalents
• CashAndCashEquivalents
• ShortTermInvestments
• AvailableForSaleSecuritiesDebtSecuritiesCurrent
• MarketableSecuritiesCurrent
• OtherShortTermInvestments
• OtherCurrentFinancialAssets
• LongTermDebtAndCapitalLeaseObligations
• LongTermDebtNoncurrent
• LongTermDebt
• NotesPayableNoncurrent
• LongTermDebtAndCapitalLeaseObligationsCurrent
• LongTermDebtCurrent
• DebtCurrent
• ShortTermBorrowings
• NotesPayableCurrent

Whether it counts

This measure is not counted by default. It can be added to Resilience on the dashboard, and it then takes its share of that dimension.