Debt Ratio Explained

Debt ratio is a proportion of company's assets and debts which affects the borrowing potential of a company. It is quite easy to understand what is debt ratio and why it is important that this ratio was equal to 1. A simple answer to a question what is debt ratio is that debt ratio is a total amount of your company's debts divided to a total amount of your company's assets. If this ratio exceeds 1, company has more debts than assets or is even insolvent. Knowing the amount of your company's debts and assets makes it easy to calculate debt ratio. And after you calculate debt ratio you can see if your company is under a risk of insovency or not.

Long term debt ratio is a little bit more complicated to calculate, but is still very easy to understand. The amount of long term debts of the company is divided to both preferred and common stock plus this long term debt is equal to the long term debt ratio. This ratio can show the effectiveness of your company and if long term debt ratio is high your company can be considered risky. High debt ratio makes it rather difficult to borrow more funds for your company as creditors are not interested in insolvent or risky clients. If your company has got more liabilities than equities, this will result in high debt ratio. Try to find possibility to refinance your debts and make debt ratio lower if you want to ensure financial stability and future leverage of your company.