Home Depot: Financial Leverage Analysis

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Financial Leverage Analysis Regarding financial leverage, the debt percentage ratio increased from 84.95% to 89.92%, indicating an increase in the amount of The Home Depot’s assets that are financed with debt. The debt to equity ratio drastically increased, from 5.65 to 8.92, showing a drastically increased amount of financial leverage in the company. This may not always be good for a company, as it means there is a very large amount of debt. However, the quick ratio had virtually no change (decreased by .01), showing that an increase in debt and financial leverage did not affect cash and cash equivalents. In fact, cash and cash equivalents increased, as stated in the above paragraph citing vertical analysis. The asset to equity ratio increased …show more content…

Both the working capital and current ratio, which represents the company’s ability to current liabilities with current assets, decreased. Working capital, which is The Home Depot’s current assets minus current liabilities, decreased from $3,960 in 2015 to $3,591 in 2016. The current ratio (current assets divided by current liabilities) decreased from 1.32 to 1 in 2015 to 1.25 to 1 in 2016. This indicates that The Home Depot remained fairly liquid in 2016 but was paying for their current liabilities with current assets at less of rate than they did in 2015. The Home Depot’s quick ratio decreased from .33 to 1 in 2015 to .32 to 1 in 2016. Although this is a slight decrease of .01, the company’s instant ability to pay off its current liabilities in 2016 is slightly less than its ability in 2015. The Home Depot is less liquid in 2016 than 2015 because they do not have as many cash equivalent …show more content…

Looking into this further, one can see why this ratio decreased, as the basic earnings per share increased from $5.46 to $6.45, meaning that this decrease in Price/Earnings is not necessarily a bad thing. Dividend yield percentage, however, did increase. Increasing from 1.88% to 2.0%, this shows that The Home Depot is rewarding its stockholders with a higher percentage of dividend payout. Dividend payout percentage decreased from 43.24% to 42.78%, resulting in a lower percentage of net income being paid to stockholders through cash dividends. This seems backwards considering dividend yield percentage increased, but this is actually the result of a higher increase in net earnings. Overall, The Home Depot’s market conditions are improving as basic earnings per share increased, as well as dividend yield percentage. The decrease in the P/E and dividend payout ratios can be explained through positive

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