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le around 10% during the last 3 years and increasing from 7.17% in 2002 to 9.54% in 2006.The main reason for stable ROE and ROA are better performance delivered by the management and as well as the mature characteristic of the industry, that produces stable return as well as stable growth seeing population demographics in the country.

Gross profit has been quite stable and good for the last 5 years but the concerned part is the net profit margin. Net profit margin has been very low, it had been increasing from 2002 to 2005 but it again fell in 2002 to 1.57% from 2.08%. Coles need to reduce its operating and interest expenses so as to increase its net profit margin.

On comparing the performance of Coles with its industry counterparts we can conclude that Coles Ltd is way behind its major competitor, Woolworths, in terms of ROE and ROA which might be attributable to lower net profit margin and lower financial leverage. Coles has higher financial leverage as compared to Woolworths and metcash, which means it, has greater financial risk. But despite of high leverage it has low ROE which confirms the fact that Coles has low net profit margin & asset turnover ratio.

2.1.2 Activity Analysis

A firm's operating activities require investments in both short-term (inventory and accounts receivable) and long term assets. Activity ratios describe the relationship between the firm's level of operations and assets needed to sustain operating activities. Asset turnover is important in determining firms ROA; it also formulates reasons of how it will affect firm's ROE. Evaluating the effectiveness of asset management is the purpose of asset turnover analysis.

2.1.2.1 Short term activity ratios

Working capital is our main concern while evaluating a company. It can clearly be observed that since Coles has high turnover ratios it uses cash basis in its sales. It can be clearly being seen that it took only 4.48 days on an average for Coles to convert its inventory investment back in to cash. From the figures last 5 years we can clearly interpret that Coles has drastically improved its cash conversion cycle from 23 days in 2002 to 4.48 days in 2006.

Now, if we compare Coles with its competitors we can see that Woolworths has lower cash conversion cycle and metcash has higher cash conversion cycle. Woolworths has lower cash conversion cycle because it keeps inventory in stock for shorter duration and stock is converted in to good sold in less span of time. On the other hand Metcash keeps inventory in stock for lower no. of days but it provides more no. of days to its receivables for payment due to which it has higher cash conversion cycle. Seeing the industry it can be concluded that Coles has good cash conversion cycle but it can improve on it by reducing the Average number of days for which inventory is in stock.

2.1.2.2 Long term activity ratios

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