EV OEM Financial Quality Screen

Summary

Seven of twelve automakers reported a negative cash conversion cycle for 2025. The driver is not inventory efficiency but payables, stretched from 92 to 141 days — an improvement that cannot persist, and one already showing up as receivable impairments at their suppliers.

This screen splits each company's operating cash flow into volume, price and payables contributions, then restates net income with R&D capitalisation rates and depreciation lives normalised, isolating the gap between financial quality and reported earnings.

Restated, two of the three highest reported net margins fall out of the top six. One capitalises 61% of R&D against a peer median of 24%; another extended tooling amortisation from three years to five, worth 18% of the period's profit on its own. Company-by-company restatement steps, the basis for each adjustment and sensitivity ranges are in section three, with an XLSX you can drop your own assumptions into…

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