What Is a Cash Charge?

A cash charge is a charge against a company's earnings that is accompanied by a cash outflow.

Understanding a Cash Charge

A cash charge is a charge against a company's earnings, usually stemming from an isolated event that management doesn’t expect to occur again.

Cash charges often materialize when a company incurs expenses from 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:restructuring, downsizing, and improving its operating performance. These one-off costs appear as an extraordinary expense in the company’s 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:income statement and weigh on NI: a closely monitored metric revealing the money that remains after subtracting all expenditures, includi🌌ng operating expenses, costs of goods sold (COGS), interest and taxes.

Typically, the company will explain what the non-recurring cash charge is and why it should not be considered an expense that it will be exposed to again in the future in the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:management discussion and analysis (MD&A) section of its 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:financial statement. In such cases, ma෴nagement will also provide investors with an adjusted earnings calculation that strips out the impact of these additional, one-off costs based on the logic that the𓆏y distort its true profitability.

Example of a Cash Charge

A company might make a 𓆉cash charge against earnings to provide early retirement packages to higher-paid employees.

An initial cash outlay is required to fund the retirement pack♎ages. However, the expected cash savings measures implemented through reduced salary liabilities should eventually rationalize the upfront expense, boosting profitability over the long-run.

Cash Charge vs. Non-Cash Charge

One-time, non-recurring charges can either come in the form of a cash charge against earnings, triggered, for instance, by the cost of paying severance expenses to laid-off former employees, or a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:non-cash charge: a write-down or accounting expense that does not🎐 invol🥂ve a cash payment.

Investors need to distinguish between a cash charge and a non-cash charge because they have very different ramifications for a company’s financial health and valuation, even though they both reduce NI. A cash charge is accompanied by a cash outflow, thus reducing the company’s cash position, whereas a non-cash charge—used in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:accrual accounting—represents an accounting charge.

Examples of non-cash, non-recurring charges include asset 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:impairments, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:stock-based compensation, and changes to accounting methods. Both forms of charge ca♔n have a meaningful impact on a company’s financial standing and short-term capital needs.

Special Considerations

Companies regularly seek to play down the significance of cash charges, particularly those deemed to be one-off ones. They argue that one-time charges do not reflect a company’s 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:financial performance, and, as a result, often report 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:pro-forma earnings that exclude the impact of such charges.

Some one-time charges do indeed only take place once. However, it’s also true that plenty of companies have a habit of incorrectly recording charges that they repeatedly incur in the course of their usual business activities as one-time charges, rather than 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:operating expenses, to make the company’s 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:financial health look better than it actually is.

Investors and analysts must watch out for any efforts to deceptively flatter financial performance. They s𝄹hould also contemplate whether cash charges are a cause for con🅷cern. Many are pre-flagged and harmless. Others may appear out the blue and serve as potential red flags of mismanagement, and a drastic shift in fortunes.