So we instead decided to look at the firms’ liquidity metrics, specifically their cash conversion cycles. The “CCC” lets analysts understand how well a company manages its inventory, collections, and payments; which is an important metric to know if you follow the apparel business.

You calculate the Cash Conversion Cycle by manipulating a few other liquidity metrics. First, add together the company’s Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO) and Days Sales Outstanding (DSO); then subtract its Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) from that sum. 

Or if you’re a Calcbench subscriber, you just let us do all that for you and provide the CCC number automatically. CCC (and its component elements) are all liquidity metrics we calculate and present as a matter of course.

Figure 1, below, shows quarterly CCC figures for American Eagle Outfitters ($AEO), Carters ($CRI), the Gap ($GAP), Ralph Lauren ($RL), and Urban Outfitters ($URBN).

We assume some of you will say, “Hold up! Sales, payments, and inventories fluctuate so much from one quarter to the next in the retail world that those jagged lines don’t impart much information.” 

Fair enough. With another few keystrokes we pulled up the companies’ annual CCC numbers, and that led us to Figure 2.

Now we see a very different story: a spike in 2022 for Carters and Ralph Lauren, presumably coinciding with supply chain disruptions and inflation; but overall a quite steady CCC for all five firms. 

Calcbench subscribers can access these metrics, and many more, in several ways. For these two charts above, we used our Multi-Company search page. Simply pull up the companies you want to research and then start typing “cash” into the standardized metrics field on the left side of the page. We call it the “cash-to-cash” cycle, but it’s the same metric. We started with fiscal 2025 numbers, asked for a time-series of data, and immediately had this ready for export to Excel:

You can also use our Bulk Data Query page, which tracks financial disclosures and performance metrics for one or more companies across long time periods. Just scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll see a series of liquidity metrics Calcbench automatically calculates and reports out to you in Excel.

Just another glimpse of how Calcbench collects, organizes, and prepares financial data that you can analyze to your heart’s content.