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Cash is one of the key items in the balance sheet, since it is necessary for every transaction. Cash holdings provide the company with flexibility and the ability to meet its own needs, regardless of existing business conditions. It can be significant in terms of the company’s internal financing, thus it is crucial to maintain an optimal level of cash, given that external financing also entails certain costs. An optimal level of cash holdings represents available money to investors and should increase general business efficiency. Achieving an optimal level of cash holdings provides the company with autonomy to explore new opportunities as well as take risks. An insufficient level of cash creates the need for financing from external sources, which is reflected in reduced investments and decreased sale of available assets and securities. However, a large amount of cash enables the company to respond to market trends and take advantage of investment opportunities so as to secure the financial power of the company.

The paper studies a new point of view and the approach to profit as an inherent part of business finance as well as a symbol of every healthy economy. The fundamental function of the profit is a stimulus; it means initial motivator of the business activity. The profit provides core resources for survival at the business start and after the stabilization, it is the synonym for progress. The aim of this paper is to detect significant change-points in times series of EBITDA during the analysed period in every country of the Visegrad Group to recognize the progress years in the monotonic development. We use a method of homogeneity test of time series that delivers significant robust results. We observe the variable EBITDA to eliminate different tax, interest and depreciation policies of these emerging countries. The original research of this article is based on empirical results of business profits of the sample of 3,853 enterprises covered by the broad theoretical review. Firstly, we identify missing values; and detect the outliers by Z-score and Grubbs test. EBITDA of 1,058 Slovak enterprises, 688 Czech enterprises, 1,376 Polish enterprises and 731 Hungarian enterprises is analysed during the period from 2010 to 2018. We eliminate the inconsistent observations and construct average values of EBITDA. Secondly, we prove normality by Jarque-Bera test, and support it by Shapiro-Wilk test, Anderson-Darling test, Lilliefors test to deliver reliable results. Thirdly, we find an independency of distribution that confirm randomness by the Box-Pierce test. And finally, we identify the years that affect heterogeneity of EBITDA in the countries of the Visegrad Four. We uncover some really surprising results. For all countries in the Visegrad Four, the year 2013 is detected as a change-point at a significance level of 0.05. This significant year shifts EBITDA between two homogeneous series with corresponding central lines and recognizes the similar annual development within the groups. In addition, we discuss the results to the areas and factors affecting the business risk. The adjustable area represented by the business dynamism has no significant impact on the development of EBITDA. The uncontrollable macroeconomic factors such as a GDP, unemployment rate, inflation rate, average monthly gross wage, and Ease of doing business index demonstrate the same development of Slovak, Czech, Polish and Hungarian enterprises. We connect our gained results to the undisputed influence of these factors and its derived components on monotonic development of EBITDA. Despite the fact, that the countries are not economically interconnected as they used to be in the past, in has to be underlined that their mutual relations are still very narrow and close and that might be the reason, why identical results are achieved in the countries with divergent development.

In the 1970s, Milton Friedman has claimed that: “the only social responsibility of a company is the use of its resources together with the engagement in businesses that are meant to increase the profits, maintaining the rules of the game. This means to engage into an open and free competition, without any abuse or fraud.” And this is how, starting from the 70s, the “rules of the game” were known in business and the responsibility that triggers the community, a responsibility that the companies fully acknowledge and embrace. The corporate social responsibility (CSR) deals with strategies used by companies to develop their business in an ethical way, to respect the relation with the other members of the society. CSR can involve a range of partnerships with the local communities, investments with a real social impact of the corporations (education, art, and environmental protection), the development of the relations of the companies with the clients, employees and their families.

Mechanical engineering belongs to the key industries in Slovakia. In terms of achieved sales and the rate of employment, it ranks among the largest manufacturing industries. The industry currently employs 12 per cent of the population and accounts for up to 42 per cent of total output of the Slovak Republic. Many of the enterprises operating in this industry are small or mediumsized. This industry apparently plays an essential role in the global economy, it is a source of entrepreneurship, innovations and new jobs. These are some of the reasons for which SMEs´ profitability and ways of its improvement should draw particular attention. It is therefore obvious that the issues of the financial analysis in SMEs are receiving constant attention. Since SMEs are the backbone of the Slovak economy and mechanical engineering is one of its key industries, our intention in this article is to focus attention on profitability and factors influencing it in SMEs active in the mechanical engineering industry.

Severe consequences of the global financial crisis resulted in re-thinking the risk management processes and approaches. OECD (2009), BIS (2008), FSA (2008) and IIF (2007) suggested that corporate risks should be “high on the agenda” of every organization, highlighting the need for a comprehensive (enterprise-wide) risk management framework. What has been realized in the aftermath of the global financial crisis is that a failure to transmit information about risk exposures can be attributed to the traditional silo-based risk management (TRM) (OECD, 2009).

Incorporating eco-sustainability criteria into the corporate agenda means assigning the natural environment such attributes as power, legitimacy, urgency and proximity. The complexity and interconnectedness of global ecosystems make it difficult for managers to determine specific impacts on these systems; but that is only an excuse for trivial sustainability reporting and dubious triple-bottom-line assessments. And it is the very relationship between accountability in the form of disclosure and ‘shareholder value’ that has kept the business-case controversy alive.

The valuation of the company in financial distress is a specific area of valuation, which has not been comprehensively analyzed yet. The question of the valuation of companies in time of crisis is partly mentioned in some specialized literature which centers upon the integration of problems of risks and uncertainty into activities concerning the investment decision and the valuation of companies. This integration is possible to carry out by adjusting the cash flows or the discounting rate.