Yahoo Finance We're A Little Worried About Carnaby Resources's (ASX:CNB) Cash Burn Rate
We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. For example, although Amazon.com made losses for many years after listing, if you had bought and held the shares since 1999, you would have made a fortune. Having said that, unprofitable companies are risky because they could potentially burn through all their cash and become distressed.
Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether Carnaby Resources (ASX:CNB) shareholders should be worried about its cash burn. In this article, we define cash burn as its annual (negative) free cash flow, which is the amount of money a company spends each year to fund its growth. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.
See our latest analysis for Carnaby Resources
When Might Carnaby Resources 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. As at December 2019, Carnaby Resources had cash of AU$1.9m and no debt. Importantly, its cash burn was AU$2.6m over the trailing twelve months. So it had a cash runway of approximately 9 months from December 2019. To be frank, this kind of short runway puts us on edge, as it indicates the company must reduce its cash burn significantly, or else raise cash imminently. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.
How Is Carnaby Resources's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
Carnaby Resources didn't record any revenue over the last year, indicating that it's an early stage company still developing its 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. During the last twelve months, its cash burn actually ramped up 96%. While this spending increase is no doubt intended to drive growth, if the trend continues the company's cash runway will shrink very quickly. Carnaby Resources 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.
How Hard Would It Be For Carnaby Resources To Raise More Cash For Growth?
Given its cash burn trajectory, Carnaby Resources shareholders should already be thinking about how easy it might be for it to raise further cash in the future. Companies can raise capital through either debt or equity. One of the main advantages held by publicly listed companies is that they can sell shares to investors to raise cash to fund growth. We can compare a company's cash burn to its market capitalisation to get a sense for how many new shares a company would have to issue to fund one year's operations.
Since it has a market capitalisation of AU$6.1m, Carnaby Resources's AU$2.6m in cash burn equates to about 42% of its market value. That's high expenditure relative to the value of the entire company, so if it does have to issue shares to fund more growth, that could end up really hurting shareholders returns (through significant dilution).
Is Carnaby Resources's Cash Burn A Worry?
We must admit that we don't think Carnaby Resources is in a very strong position, when it comes to its cash burn. While its cash runway wasn't too bad, its increasing cash burn does leave us rather nervous. Considering all the measures mentioned in this report, we reckon that its cash burn is fairly risky, and if we held shares we'd be watching like a hawk for any deterioration. Taking a deeper dive, we've spotted 7 warning signs for Carnaby Resources you should be aware of, and 4 of them are concerning.
Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of companies insiders are buying, and this list of stocks growth stocks (according to analyst forecasts)
If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.
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