Yahoo Finance Fabled Copper (CVE:FCO) Is Very Risky Based On Its Cash Burn
We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. For example, although software-as-a-service business Salesforce.com lost money for years while it grew recurring revenue, if you held shares since 2005, you'd have done very well indeed. Nonetheless, only a fool would ignore the risk that a loss making company burns through its cash too quickly.
Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether Fabled Copper (CVE:FCO) shareholders should be worried about its cash burn. In this report, we will consider the company's annual negative free cash flow, henceforth referring to it as the 'cash burn'. We'll start by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves in order to calculate its cash runway.
See our latest analysis for Fabled Copper
When Might Fabled Copper Run Out Of Money?
A company's cash runway is the amount of time it would take to burn through its cash reserves at its current cash burn rate. Fabled Copper has such a small amount of debt that we'll set it aside, and focus on the CA$231k in cash it held at September 2019. Importantly, its cash burn was CA$883k over the trailing twelve months. So it had a cash runway of approximately 3 months from September 2019. With a cash runway that short, we strongly believe that the company must raise cash or else douse its cash burn promptly. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.
How Is Fabled Copper's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
Because Fabled Copper isn't currently generating revenue, we consider it an early-stage business. So while we can't look to sales to understand growth, we can look at how the cash burn is changing to understand how expenditure is trending over time. Remarkably, it actually increased its cash burn by 326% in the last year. With that kind of spending growth its cash runway will shorten quickly, as it simultaneously uses its cash while increasing the burn rate. Fabled Copper makes us a little nervous due to its lack of substantial operating revenue. We prefer most of the stocks on this list of stocks that analysts expect to grow.
Can Fabled Copper Raise More Cash Easily?
Given its cash burn trajectory, Fabled Copper shareholders should already be thinking about how easy it might be for it to raise further cash in the future. Issuing new shares, or taking on debt, are the most common ways for a listed company to raise more money for its business. Commonly, a business will sell new shares in itself to raise cash to drive growth. By comparing a company's annual cash burn to its total market capitalisation, we can estimate roughly how many shares it would have to issue in order to run the company for another year (at the same burn rate).
Fabled Copper has a market capitalisation of CA$2.0m and burnt through CA$883k last year, which is 45% of the company's market value. From this perspective, it seems that the company spent a huge amount relative to its market value, and we'd be very wary of a painful capital raising.
So, Should We Worry About Fabled Copper's Cash Burn?
There are no prizes for guessing that we think Fabled Copper's cash burn is a bit of a worry. In particular, we think its increasing cash burn suggests it isn't in a good position to keep funding growth. And although we accept its cash burn relative to its market cap wasn't as worrying as its increasing cash burn, it was still a real negative; as indeed were all the factors we considered in this article. The measures we've considered in this article lead us to believe its cash burn is actually quite concerning, and its weak cash position seems likely to cost shareholders one way or another. On another note, Fabled Copper has 4 warning signs (and 3 which are a bit unpleasant) we think you should know about.
Of course Fabled Copper may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see this free collection of companies boasting high return on equity, or this list of stocks that insiders are buying.
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