Cash Conversion Cycle

Methodology

Universe is the full S&P 500. For every constituent, Alpha Vantage's INCOME_STATEMENT and BALANCE_SHEET endpoints (quarterly) supply a trailing-twelve-month (TTM) revenue and cost of revenue, joined against the latest quarter's receivables, inventory, and payables. Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) = receivables ÷ TTM revenue × 365. Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO) = inventory ÷ TTM cost of revenue × 365. Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) = payables ÷ TTM cost of revenue × 365. Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC) = DSO + DIO − DPO — roughly, how many days pass between paying for inputs and collecting cash from the sale, net of how long the company itself gets to pay its own suppliers. A negative CCC (common for large retailers, restaurants, and subscription software businesses) means the company collects from customers before it has to pay its suppliers — its operating cycle effectively funds itself, or funds other parts of the business.

A company is included only if all three components are computable: a clean trailing-four-quarter window with both statements present, positive TTM revenue, and a positive TTM cost of revenue with inventory and payables both reported. This deliberately excludes most Financials, Real Estate, and Utilities names — "inventory" and "cost of revenue" aren't meaningful line items for a bank, a REIT, or a power utility, so this page's sector coverage skews toward goods- and services-businesses (Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, Industrials, Information Technology, Materials, Health Care, Energy) where the concept actually applies. That's a real scope limitation of the metric itself, not a data-quality problem.

The two regression tests are single-snapshot cross-sections (no accumulated history needed): DSO vs. DPO asks whether companies that collect slowly from customers also tend to pay their own suppliers slowly (or negotiate/receive different treatment), and CCC vs. ROIC (reusing this site's own ROIC vs. Cost of Capital data rather than a second, unrelated profitability calculation) asks whether tighter working-capital management actually shows up as a higher return on invested capital, or whether the two are unrelated in practice. Both use the same Pearson-and-Spearman two-method check as Factor Analysis.

One-time snapshot — no recurring schedule, matching every other full-universe fundamentals sweep added to this site since mid-September 2026. Re-run manually for a fresh pass; quarterly fundamentals don't move day to day. Sector and company name come from the same weekly metadata sweep that backs Sector Beeswarm.