A prominent investor who holds a large stake in the Burton Tool Company has recently claimed that the company is mismanaged  As evidence for this claim, the investor cited the company' s failure to slow production in response to a recent rise in its inventory of finished products  It is doubtful whether an investor' s sniping at management can ever be anything other than counterproductive, but <b> in this case it is clearly not justified </b>  It is true that an increased inventory of finished products often indicates that production is outstripping demand
<b> In Burton' s case it indicates no such thing </b>, however: the increase in inventory is entirely attributable to products that have already been assigned to orders received from customers
The first states the conclusion of the argument as a whole; the second states an intermediate conclusion that is drawn in order to support that conclusion.