Investors in the manufacturing companies expect that managers entrusted with the responsibility of managing the operational activities of the companies are competent and optimally utilize the resources, including the cash management to ensure quality returns to the equity holders. Studies have shown that most managers of the manufacturing companies are desirous of reporting robust and plausible performance reports, rather than ensuring effective and optimal cash management to avoid disruption of production process. Consequently, achieving these expectations of investors and ensuring good return on assets and impressing earnings per share, remain a major problem facing the managers. This study therefore investigated the impact of cash management on performance of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The study adopted ex-post facto research design, using population of 47 listed manufacturing companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange as at 31st December 2016. Fifteen companies were selected using a combination of stratified and purposive sampling technique. Data were extracted from published financial statements of the sampled manufacturing companies, the validity and reliability of the data were premised on the scrutiny of the external auditors. Descriptive statistics and inferential (Regression) statistics were used for data analysis. The result revealed that cash management had significant positive effect on performance on the following: Cash management had a positive and significant effect on Return on Asset with Adj R2=0.09, F- Stat(3.146) = 10.32, P-value= 0.032: Cash management had positive and significant effect on Tobins Q with Adj R2=0.16, F-Statistics (3.146) = 20.38 and P-value = 0.00, cash management with control variables had positive and significant effect on Return on Assets with Adj R2= 0.0137, F-stat (3.146) = 16.86 and P-value = 0.00. The result further revealed that cash management with control variable had positive and significant effect on Tobins Q with Adj R2-0.1086, F-Stat(3.146) = 23.26 and P-value of 0.00. The study concluded that, cash management has effect on performance of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The study recommended that shareholders, managers, policy makers, financial regulators and market participants should pay more attention to quality of earnings, returns on equity and assets of the companies. Managers should aggressively engage in optimal cash conversion cycle, currents assets and liquidity management and their optimal utilization in achieving their short and long term goals and safely satisfy shareholders objective.
Keywords: Cash management, Manufacturing Companies, Performance, Shareholders Wealth, value creation
