Cash and equivalents
Cash and equivalents is the money the company held on the reporting date, plus short-term deposits and securities it could turn into money almost immediately.
How it is computed here
| Formula | as reported on the balance sheet |
|---|---|
| Unit | Currency amount |
| Period | One fiscal year, as reported |
| Source | Extracted from SEC filings; every value on an asset page carries the accounting tag and the filing it came from |
| Identifier | caixa |
What goes into the formula
| Cash | Bank balances and notes — money that is already money, on the one day of the year the balance sheet describes. |
|---|---|
| Cash equivalents | Highly liquid investments, conventionally those maturing within three months of purchase — treasury bills, money market funds, short commercial paper. |
A formula without its inputs explained is decoration. Where an input is missing from a filing, the metric is left empty here rather than completed with a zero or an estimate.
How to calculate cash and equivalents, step by step
A company with a large debt load and a larger cash pile.
| Cash and equivalents | $5,000M |
|---|---|
| Short-term debt | $800M |
| Long-term debt | $3,200M |
- Gross debt = 800 + 3,200 = $4,000M.
- Net debt = 4,000 − 5,000 = −$1,000M.
- The company owes four billion and holds five. Net, it is a lender.
Result: $5,000M of cash and net debt of −$1,000M
Reading the debt line alone would have called this a leveraged company. It is the opposite, and the cash line is what says so.
The figures in this example are illustrative and rounded — they are not a real company. The real figures on this site are the live ones below and on every asset page, each carrying the filing it came from.
What cash and equivalents is good for
Cash is the only asset that is worth exactly what the balance sheet says. It decides whether the company can survive a bad year without asking anyone, and it is the subtraction that turns gross debt into net debt.
What this number does not tell you
A single date is a snapshot, and a company can arrange for the snapshot to look good — drawing a revolving facility on the last day of the year raises cash and debt together and improves the appearance of liquidity. Some of the cash may also be trapped: held in a subsidiary abroad, pledged against a loan, or required by a regulator, and the balance sheet line does not distinguish. For a bank, the line means something different again — deposits are its funding, not its spare change.
Every metric on this site is published with its blind spot stated. A figure without its limit is half a fact.
Highest reported cash and equivalents
| CCitigroup Inc | $349.6B |
|---|---|
| JPMJPMORGAN CHASE & CO | $343.3B |
| BACBofA Finance LLC | $231.8B |
| UBSUBS Group AG | $231.4B |
| WFCWELLS FARGO & COMPANY/MN | $172.6B |
| GSThe Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. | $164.3B |
| MSMORGAN STANLEY | $111.7B |
| AMZNAMAZON COM INC | $86.8B |
From the most recent fiscal year of each company. Only companies reporting in US dollars are ranked here — a figure in yen or won is not larger, it is in another currency.
See it in a published filing
These pages show the figure across up to nineteen fiscal years, with the accounting tag and the filing behind every value.