Yahoo Finance Here's Why We're A Bit Worried About Acer Therapeutics's (NASDAQ:ACER) Cash Burn Situation
We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. For example, biotech and mining exploration companies often lose money for years before finding success with a new treatment or mineral discovery. Nonetheless, only a fool would ignore the risk that a loss making company burns through its cash too quickly.
So, the natural question for Acer Therapeutics (NASDAQ:ACER) shareholders is whether they should be concerned by its rate of 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). We'll start by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves in order to calculate its cash runway.
View our latest analysis for Acer Therapeutics
How Long Is Acer Therapeutics'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. In September 2019, Acer Therapeutics had US$16m in cash, and was debt-free. In the last year, its cash burn was US$30m. So it had a cash runway of approximately 6 months from September 2019. Importantly, analysts think that Acer Therapeutics will reach cashflow breakeven in 4 years. Essentially, that means the company will either reduce its cash burn, or else require more cash. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.
How Is Acer Therapeutics's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
Because Acer Therapeutics isn't currently generating revenue, we consider it an early-stage 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. Over the last year its cash burn actually increased by a very significant 85%. Oftentimes, increased cash burn simply means a company is accelerating its business development, but one should always be mindful that this causes the cash runway to shrink. Clearly, however, the crucial factor is whether the company will grow its business going forward. So you might want to take a peek at how much the company is expected to grow in the next few years.
Can Acer Therapeutics Raise More Cash Easily?
Since its cash burn is moving in the wrong direction, Acer Therapeutics shareholders may wish to think ahead to when the company may need to raise more cash. 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 US$36m, Acer Therapeutics's US$30m in cash burn equates to about 84% of its market value. Given just how high that expenditure is, relative to the company's market value, we think there's an elevated risk of funding distress, and we would be very nervous about holding the stock.
How Risky Is Acer Therapeutics's Cash Burn Situation?
As you can probably tell by now, we're rather concerned about Acer Therapeutics's cash burn. In particular, we think its cash burn relative to its market cap suggests it isn't in a good position to keep funding growth. While not as bad as its cash burn relative to its market cap, its increasing cash burn is also a concern, and considering everything mentioned above, we're struggling to find much to be optimistic about. One real positive is that analysts are forecasting that the company will reach breakeven. Looking at the metrics in this article all together, we consider its cash burn situation to be rather dangerous, and likely to cost shareholders one way or the other. Notably, our data indicates that Acer Therapeutics insiders have been trading the shares. You can discover if they are buyers or sellers by clicking on this link.
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