4. Results
Analysing the time series of Z00-scores we found no significant differences between the means of the high (0.399) and
medium (0.463) IS deciles, but highly significant (p50.01) differences compared with the low IS decile (0.589).
Obviously, firms with medium to high inventories also have better performance criteria, whereas firms with the
lowest inventories show the worst financial performance on average (Tables 1 and 2).
Analysing the time trends we found a constant performance trend for the high IS decile, whereas the low IS
decile showed a strong significant decline in performance over time. For the medium IS decile we detected a slight
but significant decline in performance. The difference between the high and medium groups was not significant. But
comparing the high and medium groups to the low IS decile respectively, the differences were significant (Figure 3
and Table 3).