How many times a company sells and replaces its inventory in a year. Higher means faster sales and less capital tied up in stock. Above 6 is generally efficient. Grocery stores often exceed 12.
Formula
Description
Measures how many times a company sells and replaces its inventory during a period. Higher turnover means inventory moves quickly, reducing storage costs, obsolescence risk, and working capital needs. It is the inverse of DIO expressed as a ratio.
Interpretation
Above 6 is generally efficient. Grocery and retail businesses often exceed 12. Very low inventory turnover (below 3) may indicate excess stock or demand problems. Compare within industry for meaningful benchmarks.
Related Integrity Indicators
Operating cash flow divided by total debt. Measures how quickly a company could repay all its debt from operating cash flow alone. Above 0.5 means the company could theoretically pay off all debt in two years from operations. Below 0.15 signals heavy debt relative to cash generation.
Free cash flow divided by net income. Above 1.0 means the company generates more cash than its reported profits, a hallmark of high-quality earnings. Consistently below 0.7 is a red flag.
Compares operating cash flow to net income. When cash flow exceeds earnings, the company's profits are well-supported by actual cash. This is one of the nine criteria in the Piotroski F-Score.
What percentage of revenue must be reinvested in capital assets. Below 8% is capital-light and attractive. Buffett prefers businesses that don't require large ongoing capital outlays to maintain their competitive position.
Explore More
Learn
Investing Tools
- Stock ScreenerScreen 85,000+ stocks by 120 indicators
- VM Score LeaderboardTop stocks ranked daily by VMCI
- Guru StrategiesApply Buffett, Graham, Greenblatt strategies
- DCF CalculatorCalculate intrinsic value, free
- Global MarketsMacro overview across 73 exchanges
- Stock CompareSide-by-side company comparison
Browse Stocks
- Stock Analysis HubBrowse by sector, exchange, or country
- Technology StocksTop tech stocks by intrinsic value
- Healthcare StocksTop healthcare stocks by VMCI
- Financial StocksTop financial stocks by VMCI
- Energy StocksTop energy stocks by fundamentals
- Real Estate StocksTop REIT and property stocks
- NYSE StocksBest-valued stocks on NYSE
- NASDAQ StocksTop NASDAQ stocks by VM Score
- LSE StocksTop London Stock Exchange stocks
- US StocksBest US stocks by fundamentals
- UK StocksBest UK stocks by fundamentals
- Japan StocksTop Japanese stocks by value