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 and the second both state intermediate conclusions that are drawn in order to support jointly the conclusion of the argument as a whole, according to the given argument.