Yahoo Finance Will Elsight (ASX:ELS) Spend Its Cash Wisely?
Just because a business does not make any money, does not mean that the stock will go down. 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.
So should Elsight (ASX:ELS) shareholders 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). First, we'll determine its cash runway by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves.
View our latest analysis for Elsight
Does Elsight Have A Long 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. As at June 2020, Elsight had cash of US$1.8m and such minimal debt that we can ignore it for the purposes of this analysis. In the last year, its cash burn was US$2.5m. That means it had a cash runway of around 8 months as of June 2020. 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. You can see how its cash balance has changed over time in the image below.
How Is Elsight's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
In our view, Elsight doesn't yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just US$777k 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. It's possible that the 18% reduction in cash burn over the last year is evidence of management tightening their belts as cash reserves deplete. Admittedly, we're a bit cautious of Elsight 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 Easily Can Elsight Raise Cash?
Even though it has reduced its cash burn recently, shareholders should still consider how easy it would be for Elsight to raise more cash in the future. Generally speaking, a listed business can raise new cash through issuing shares or taking on debt. Many companies end up issuing new shares to fund future 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.
Elsight's cash burn of US$2.5m is about 6.3% of its US$40m 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.
How Risky Is Elsight's Cash Burn Situation?
Even though its cash runway makes us a little nervous, we are compelled to mention that we thought Elsight's cash burn relative to its market cap was relatively promising. We don't think its cash burn is particularly problematic, but after considering the range of factors in this article, we do think shareholders should be monitoring how it changes over time. On another note, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the company, and identified 7 warning signs for Elsight (3 make us uncomfortable!) that you should be aware of before investing here.
Of course Elsight 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.
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. 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.
Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
