RESEARCH OF THE RELATION OF WORKING CAPITALPROFITABILITY IN THE MOST PROFITABLE COMPANIES TRADED IN BORSA ISTANBUL: PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

Working capital is of great importance in the financial decision making processes of companies. Therefore, the financial managers aim to keep the working capital at the optimal level. If the working capital is kept excessively, the idle capital affects the profitability negatively and at the same time, it causes borrowing costs to the business if the working capital is low. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between working capital and profitability in the most profitable companies traded on Borsa Istanbul. Although there are many studies in the literature on the subject, it is seen that a complete consensus is still not reached. In this study, unlike other studies, not a specific sector, but the firms determined according to the highest net profit amount were taken into consideration. In the study, two different models are tested by taking return on assets and return on equity as dependent variables. It is seen that when the return on assets is a dependent variable, the ratios affecting the profitability are the average maturity of debts, liquidity ratio and leverage ratio. Considering the coefficients, it has been determined that the most determining ratio is the leverage ratio. In case the equity profitability is the dependent variable, the model is found to be meaningless.

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