Yahoo Finance Is Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN) A Financially Sound Company?
Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN), which has zero-debt on its balance sheet, can maximize capital returns by increasing debt due to its lower cost of capital. However, the trade-off is GERN will have to follow strict debt obligations which will reduce its financial flexibility. Zero-debt can alleviate some risk associated with the company meeting debt obligations, but this doesn’t automatically mean GERN has outstanding financial strength. I will go over a basic overview of the stock’s financial health, which I believe provides a ballpark estimate of their financial health status.
View our latest analysis for Geron
Is GERN growing fast enough to value financial flexibility over lower cost of capital?
Debt funding can be cheaper than issuing new equity due to lower interest cost on debt. But the downside of having debt in a company’s balance sheet is the debtholder’s higher claim on its assets in the case of liquidation, as well as stricter capital management requirements. The lack of debt on GERN’s balance sheet may be because it does not have access to cheap capital, or it may believe this trade-off is not worth it. Choosing financial flexibility over capital returns make sense if GERN is a high-growth company. GERN delivered a negative revenue growth of -8.9%. While its negative growth hardly justifies opting for zero-debt, if the decline sustains, it may find it hard to raise debt at an acceptable cost.
Can GERN meet its short-term obligations with the cash in hand?
Since Geron doesn’t have any debt on its balance sheet, it doesn’t have any solvency issues, which is a term used to describe the company’s ability to meet its long-term obligations. However, another measure of financial health is its short-term obligations, which is known as liquidity. These include payments to suppliers, employees and other stakeholders. At the current liabilities level of US$4.5m, it seems that the business has been able to meet these obligations given the level of current assets of US$169m, with a current ratio of 37.8x. However, a ratio greater than 3x may be considered high by some.
Next Steps:
As a high-growth company, it may be beneficial for GERN to have some financial flexibility, hence zero-debt. This may mean this is an optimal capital structure for the business, given that it is also meeting its short-term commitment. In the future, its financial position may change. This is only a rough assessment of financial health, and I’m sure GERN has company-specific issues impacting its capital structure decisions. I suggest you continue to research Geron to get a more holistic view of the stock by looking at:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for GERN’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for GERN’s outlook.
Historical Performance: What has GERN’s returns been like over the past? Go into more detail in the past track record analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of our analysis for more clarity.
Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
