Capital expenditures are purchases made by a company to buy or maintain an asset. Or, if you're talking specifically accounting, the money they spent buying or maintain the asset.
The whole buying vs. repairing thing comes in with accounting. Say you're buying an asset (a building for storage, for example), the cost needs to be spread out over the useful life of the asset. On the other hand, if you're repairing a roof on a building you already own, you can deduct that expense right away. This relates back to the estimated value and life of the asset (because it will count on the books as an asset after purchase).
Businesses have varying amounts of capital expenditures, but the figure can be viewed as a ratio. Generally, you can divide the cash flow by the capital expenditure and use that number as a gauge. A high ratio means the company is funding their capital expenditures (their purchases) with funds generated from their business. A low one though means they might not be funding their purchases with cash flows, and they might be borrowing to buy things.
There's no rule against that (businesses are allowed to have loans) but if it gets too out of whack the business could be headed for more debt than it can handle...and potential bankruptcy.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is a Hard Asset?12 Views
Finance allah shmoop What is Ah hard asset Yeah It
takes a lot of hard work to get an asset
like that Okay So hard asset is just one that
you can bang on touch Engage with cell Alright examples
Oil it's Hard asset gold Hard of vintage nineteen Fifty
seven Ferrari with beige leather interior hard four thousand head
of longhorn cattle in texas A commercial building in the
best part of town All of these arm or less
commodities Hard assets Well okay Okay The categories Rare cars
art coins stamps stuff like that that's where they fit
So what do you care if something is ah hard
asset or a soft one Well most or all hard
assets are commodities and they generally do very well in
periods of very high inflation when you know stocks were
getting crushed And yeah the feds raising rates appoint a
quarter now forever Well equities and bonds will get crushed
Commodities well generally keep up with the spike in prices
causing the fed raised rates in the first place So
they're a good hedge for most investment portfolios And not
all of them are great forever like check out riel
Inflation adjusted oil prices the last few decades you had
not a good run Most not all do well though
an oil will likely have its day in the sun
again At some point you lan When in doubt remember
what kim kardashian and warren buffett said A good asset
is hard to find and a hard asset is good
to find But we won't tell you who said which
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