Yahoo Finance Companies Like Investigator Resources (ASX:IVR) Are In A Position To Invest In Growth
There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. 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 Investigator Resources (ASX:IVR) shareholders should be worried about its cash burn. For the purpose of this article, we'll define cash burn as the amount of cash the company is spending each year to fund its growth (also called its negative free cash flow). Let's start with an examination of the business's cash, relative to its cash burn.
See our latest analysis for Investigator Resources
How Long Is Investigator Resources's Cash Runway?
You can calculate a company's cash runway by dividing the amount of cash it has by the rate at which it is spending that cash. As at December 2019, Investigator Resources had cash of AU$4.2m and no debt. Importantly, its cash burn was AU$1.7m over the trailing twelve months. So it had a cash runway of about 2.5 years from December 2019. That's decent, giving the company a couple years to develop its business. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.
How Is Investigator Resources's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
In our view, Investigator Resources doesn't yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just AU$33k in the last twelve months. Therefore, for the purposes of this analysis we'll focus on how the cash burn is tracking. While it hardly paints a picture of imminent growth, the fact that it has reduced its cash burn by 32% over the last year suggests some degree of prudence. Admittedly, we're a bit cautious of Investigator Resources due to its lack of significant operating revenues. So we'd generally prefer stocks from this list of stocks that have analysts forecasting growth.
How Hard Would It Be For Investigator Resources To Raise More Cash For Growth?
Even though it has reduced its cash burn recently, shareholders should still consider how easy it would be for Investigator Resources to raise more 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. 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$12m, Investigator Resources's AU$1.7m in cash burn equates to about 14% of its market value. As a result, we'd venture that the company could raise more cash for growth without much trouble, albeit at the cost of some dilution.
How Risky Is Investigator Resources's Cash Burn Situation?
It may already be apparent to you that we're relatively comfortable with the way Investigator Resources is burning through its cash. In particular, we think its cash runway stands out as evidence that the company is well on top of its spending. And even though its cash burn relative to its market cap wasn't quite as impressive, it was still a positive. Based on the factors mentioned in this article, we think its cash burn situation warrants some attention from shareholders, but we don't think they should be worried. When you don't have traditional metrics like earnings per share and free cash flow to value a company, many are extra motivated to consider qualitative factors such as whether insiders are buying or selling shares. Please Note: Investigator Resources insiders have been trading shares, according to our data. Click here to check whether insiders have been buying or selling.
If you would prefer to check out another company with better fundamentals, then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt or this list of stocks which are all forecast to grow.
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.
We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
