Cash Balance as a Percentage of Income

The graph below was created using Google’s graph tool.

The horizontal bar graph shows how much cash is kept on hand as a percentage of sales for 10 business sectors.

The graph was generated using data at Aswath Damodaran’s website. Go to this website by clicking here. At the website, click the “Corporate Finance” button, then go down the page to the Valuation section and click “Working Capital by Sector” next to Data Sets.

The data on the graph and at Damodaran’s website can be used by companies to compare their cash on hand as a percentage of sales to the average in their business sector.

Net Income as a Percentage of Sales

The graph below was created using Google’s graph tool.

The horizontal bar graph shows the net income as a percentage of sales for 17 business sectors.

The data used in generating the graph is from Professor Aswath Damodaran (New York University)'s website. The data can be viewed by clicking here. Click here to go to Professor Damodaran’s home page.

The data shown in the graph should be useful to business owners who want to compare their net income to net income of similar companies.

Allowance for Bad Debt as a Percentage of Sales

The graph below was created using Google’s chart tool.

The vertical bar graph shows the allowance for bad debt account balance (used by companies at the end of the year) as a percentage of sales for 11 business sectors.

The data used to create the graph was taken from Internal Revenue Service statistics on form 1120s filed corporate returns for 2008. This data can be viewed on the IRS report “2008 Statistics of Income – Corporation Income Tax Returns” by clicking here (PDF file). Business receipts were used for sales. Data was used only for corporations reporting a positive net income.

The percentages are for all size companies and all subsectors, so represent an approximate benchmark average that companies can use to evaluate their own allowance for bad debt account balance to sales ratio compared to somewhat similar companies. Subsectors exist for some of the sectors, so a more similar company comparison might be available. The overall average percentage for all sectors is 0.5%.

Inventory as a Percentage of Sales

The graph below was created using Google’s chart tool.

The horizontal bar graph shows the inventory balance (at the end of the year) as a percentage of sales for 11 business sectors.

The data used to create the graph was taken from Internal Revenue Service statistics on form 1120s filed corporate returns for 2008. This data can be viewed on the IRS report “2008 Statistics of Income – Corporation Income Tax Returns” by clicking here (PDF file). Business receipts were used for sales. Data was used only for corporations reporting a positive net income.

The percentages are for all size companies and all subsectors, so represent an approximate benchmark average that companies can use to evaluate their own inventory to sales ratio compared to somewhat similar companies. Subsectors exist for some of the sectors, so a more similar company comparison might be available.