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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. But the harsh reality is that very many loss making companies burn through all their cash and go bankrupt.
Given this risk, we thought we’d take a look at whether Bio-Gene Technology (ASX:BGT) shareholders should be worried about its cash burn. For the purposes of this article, cash burn is the annual rate at which an unprofitable company spends cash to fund its growth; its negative free cash flow. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its ‘cash runway’.
View our latest analysis for Bio-Gene Technology
How Long Is Bio-Gene Technology’s Cash Runway?
A cash runway is defined as the length of time it would take a company to run out of money if it kept spending at its current rate of cash burn. In December 2021, Bio-Gene Technology had AU$5.8m in cash, and was debt-free. Looking at the last year, the company burnt through AU$2.4m. That means it had a cash runway of about 2.4 years as of December 2021. That’s decent, giving the company a couple years to develop its business. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.
How Is Bio-Gene Technology’s Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
In our view, Bio-Gene Technology doesn’t yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just AU$372k in the last twelve months. As a result, we think it’s a bit early to focus on the revenue growth, so we’ll limit ourselves to looking at how the cash burn is changing over time. Over the last year its cash burn actually increased by a very significant 87%. While this spending increase is no doubt intended to drive growth, if the trend continues the company’s cash runway will shrink very quickly. Bio-Gene Technology makes us a little nervous due to its lack of substantial operating revenue. So we’d generally prefer stocks from this list of stocks that have analysts forecasting growth.
Can Bio-Gene Technology Raise More Cash Easily?
Given its cash burn trajectory, Bio-Gene Technology shareholders may wish to consider how easily it could raise more cash, despite its solid cash runway. 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 and drive growth. By looking at a company’s cash burn relative to its market capitalisation, we gain insight on how much shareholders would be diluted if the company needed to raise enough cash to cover another year’s cash burn.
Bio-Gene Technology’s cash burn of AU$2.4m is about 5.4% of its AU$45m market capitalisation. Given that is a rather small percentage, it would probably be really easy for the company to fund another year’s growth by issuing some new shares to investors, or even by taking out a loan.
So, Should We Worry About Bio-Gene Technology’s Cash Burn?
As you can probably tell by now, we’re not too worried about Bio-Gene Technology’s cash burn. In particular, we think its cash burn relative to its market cap stands out as evidence that the company is well on top of its spending. Although we do find its increasing cash burn to be a bit of a negative, once we consider the other metrics mentioned in this article together, the overall picture is one we are comfortable with. Considering all the factors discussed in this article, we’re not overly concerned about the company’s cash burn, although we do think shareholders should keep an eye on how it develops. Taking a deeper dive, we’ve spotted 5 warning signs for Bio-Gene Technology you should be aware of, and 2 of them shouldn’t be ignored.
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)
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
