Capital Expenditure

What are Capital Expenditure – CapEx?

Capital expenditure incurs on the purchase, upgrading and maintenance of long-term assets. These long-term assets are employed to improve the capacity and Efficiency of the company. Long-term assets are physical assets such as property, machinery, infrastructure, etc., which can be taken into account for more than one Accounting period.

Commonly known as CapEx, capital expenditures are those funds that a company uses to gather, upgrade, and maintain its physical assets like buildings, property, technology, industrial plants, equipment, and more. They also involve the buying of intangible assets such as business patent, license, etc.

Although types of capital expenditures may vary, however, often CapEx is used to take new investments or projects by the firm. If a company is making capital expenditure on fixed assets, it will comprise almost everything – right from repairing a roof to buying equipment and more.

Capital expenditure has an effect on the short-term and long-term financial standing of the company. That is why it becomes important to taken them into consideration to determine the financial well-being of the business. Businesses try to maintain the level of historical capital expenditure to tell investors regarding the efficiency of investment in the business.

This financial outlay type is also generated by companies to increase or maintain the operational scope. Simply put, CapEx is a type of expense that a company shows or capitalizes on the Balance Sheet in the form of an investment instead of on the Income statement as an expense.

Types of Capital Expenditure

Capital expenditure is crucial when a business desire to check their financial standing. There are two types of capital expenditure and they are mentioned below:

1. Expenses for Maintenance of Operation

Expenses that are incurred to maintain the operations in the company are important to consider.

2. Expenses to Boost Growth

Any expense that can help in boosting growth in the future is a good expense for the business. This could be expenses with both tangible and intangible assets that can be sold when needed in the future.

Note: It is important to remember that money spent on repair or restoration of assets is not a capital expenditure. This will come under the income statement while accounting whenever such an expense has occurred. Any asset that has a life period of less than one year should not be considered as a capital expenditure but as part of an income statement.

Capital Expenditure Formula

CapEx = PP&E (current period) – PP&E (prior period) + Depreciation (current period)

CapEx Metric

With CapEx, you get to know the company’s investments in new and existing fixed assets to grow or maintain the business. As far as the accounting is concerned, expenses are regarded as the capital expenditure when the capital asset has been bought lately, or there is an investment that comes with a tenure of a year or more.

In case an expense is in the form of capital expenditure, it has to be capitalized. For that, the company will have to distribute the expenditure cost over the asset’s useful life. However, if the expense is such that it maintains the asset at the current condition, the price will be deducted completely in the year wherein the expenditure incurred.

A majority of capital-intensive firms experience a high level of capital expenses, such as telecommunication, oil exploration and production, Manufacturing, and more. For instance, For Motor Company experienced the capital expenditure of $7.46 billion in the Fiscal Year of 2016 when compared to Medtronic that bought PPE with a cost of $1.25 billion in the same year.

Capital Expenditure Example

Apart from analyzing the company’s investment in the fixed assets, the CapEx metric is useful in a variety of ratios for company analysis. In the same sense, the cash-flow-to-capital-expenditure ratio (CF/CapEx) is related to the ability of a company to gather long term assets with free cash flow.

This cash-flow-to-capital-expenditures ration generally fluctuates as businesses navigate through small and large capital expenditures cycles. If the ratio is greater than 1, it means that the operations of the company are generating enough cash to fund asset acquisitions.

However, a lower ratio represents that the company has problematic cash inflows; thus, they would have to borrow money to fund capital assets and other purchases.