Empirical Research On Chinese Hi-tech Enterprises Working Capital Management

Entering into21st century, the rapid development of the high-tech industry notonly led to the adjustment and upgrading of global industrial structure, promotedthe development of the world economy, but also had influence on the production mode and consumption structure of human society. Since the State Council approvedthe establishment of the SME Technology Innovation Fund in1999, Chinese high-tech enterprises develop fast, but there are also number of enterprises have working capital management problems due to their small-scale or financing difficulties. In this case, the international market competitiveness of Chinese high-techenterprises can’t compare with the multinational companies. Therefore, how to strengthen the management of the existing funds is the urgent problem for high-techenterprises at present.Firstly, this paper use related financial indicators of366listed companies in2011classified to electronics industry, information technology and biological pharmaceuticals industry as the sample data, then select R&D ratio, sales income growth ratio and dividend payment ratio as the classification variables, and use clusteranalysis to divide the sample enterprises into the start-up hi-tech enterprises, therapid growing hi-tech enterprises, mature hi-tech enterprises and the falling hi-techenterprises. The quality of the clustering results is high and most of high-techenterprises are at the peak of the development in2011, which93.7%are at rapidgrowth or mature and stable stage. Through the statistical description of the enterprises’working capital level in different stages in2011, the paper find the hi-techenterprises in different growth stages have significant differences on working capitmanagement: ones at start-up stage have the highest level of working capital, while ones at rapid growth stage and mature stage have lower working capital,and the recession ones have the lowest working capital level. On the basis of theclustering analysis, this paper does empirical research on the influence factors of hi-tech enterprises, working capital management in different growth stages. the resultsshow that the working capital level of the start-up ones is negatively correlatedwith enterprise scale significantly, positively correlated with the asset-liability ratio, while the R&D ratio, assets pledged ability does not have significant effect.The working capital overall level of the rapid growth ones is negatively correlatedwith the enterprise scale and the dependence of supply chain significantly, positivelycorrelated with the ROA, while the sales revenue growth, product market competition degree, credit policy and capital accumulation ratio does not have significanteffect. The level of the mature and stable ones is significantly negatively correlatedwith the dependence of supply chain, positively correlated with the enterprisescale, credit policy and the dependence of short-term borrowing, while dividend distribution ratio, product market competition degree and capital accumulationratio does not have significant effect. In the case of other factors constant, theworking capital overall level of the recession ones is respectively negatively correlatedwith dividend distribution ratio and asset-liability ratio.On the basis of the existing literatures, combining industry characteristics ofhigh-tech enterprises, this paper analyzes the current situation of working capitalmanagement of Chinese hi-tech enterprises successively with cluster analysis anddescriptive statistics. And then it discusses the key internal factors of working capitalmanagement of Chinese hi-tech enterprises at different stages of growth withregression analysis and correlation analysis. It aims to provide empirical support andrelevant suggestion for working capital management of hi-tech enterprises, helphi-tech enterprises improve the efficiency of existing capital use and optimize theallocation of financial resources. On the other hand, the author believe that enterprises always making decisions of financing, production, sales only considering thefinal return rate of the project, and they are easy to ignore the impact of workingcapital flows by the decision-making process. Measuring the impact of relevantfinancial indicators of working capital can provide more decision-making basiswith the amount of working capital for enterprise management and decision-making, and help enterprises gradually manage the working capital measurably with important practical application value for the sustaining, rapid and healthy developmentof Chinese hi-tech enterprises.