<![CDATA[Purpose: This study tests whether current sales growth moderates the link between prior operating cash-flow intensity and subsequent Return on Equity (ROE) in Indonesian non-financial companies, treating sales growth as a boundary condition for the profitability effect of internal cash generation.Research Methodology: We built a balanced panel of 163 consistently profitable companies (652 firm-year observations, 2020-2025), sequencing operating cash-flow intensity at t-1, sales growth at t, and ROE at t+1. We tested the hypotheses using two-way fixed-effects regression with firm-clustered standard errors, mean-centered interactions, simple-slope analysis, and cluster bootstrapping.Results: At average sales growth, prior operating cash-flow intensity correlated negatively with future ROE, while sales growth itself correlated positively with it. Their interaction was positive: higher growth weakened the negative relationship until it became statistically indistinguishable from zero. This moderation effect held within ordinary operating ranges but was sensitive to extreme-value treatment.Conclusion: Operating cash flow intensity alone does not guarantee higher shareholder profitability. Internal cash generation creates value when firms can utilize liquidity through productive sales expansion.Limitations: Several factors constrain causal interpretation and generalizability: a short pandemic-to-recovery window, a sample restricted to consistently profitable firms, reliance on accounting disclosures, residual cross-sectional dependence, and sensitivity to winsorization.Contribution: We introduce a temporally ordered moderation framework that identifies sales growth as an operating boundary condition, extending the Agency Theory-Free Cash Flow Hypothesis and Contingency Theory with cross-sector evidence from an emerging market. Operating cash generation benefits shareholders only when firms channel that liquidity into sales expansion.]]>
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