NET WORKING CAPITAL COMPONENTS AND FIRM PROFITABILITY IN CROATIA BASED ON PANEL DATA FROM 2016 TO 2023

This study examines the relationship between individual components of net working capital and corporate profitability in Croatia over the period from 2016 to 2023.The analysis focuses on two key profitability indicators, ROA and ROE, while the core working capital components included in the research comprise inventory, cash, receivables, and short-term liabilities.To account for the crisis period, a COVID_dummy variable was introduced to capture the direct pandemic impact years.Three methodological approaches were employed in the empirical analysis: classical OLS regression on transformed data, fixed effects panel regression, and dynamic GMM regression to address potential endogeneity and time dependence.The results indicate that receivables and cash have a positive influence on profitability, whereas shortterm liabilities exhibit a negative effect.The impact of the COVID_dummy variable was not statistically significant.The findings confirm the importance of disaggregated analysis of working capital components in assessing firms' financial performance and highlight the need to include additional control variables in future research.