Yahoo Finance Here's Why We're A Bit Worried About Amani Gold's (ASX:ANL) Cash Burn Situation
We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. 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 Amani Gold (ASX:ANL) 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). We'll start by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves in order to calculate its cash runway.
See our latest analysis for Amani Gold
Does Amani Gold Have A Long Cash Runway?
A company's cash runway is calculated by dividing its cash hoard by its cash burn. As at June 2022, Amani Gold had cash of AU$3.8m and no debt. In the last year, its cash burn was AU$6.6m. That means it had a cash runway of around 7 months as of June 2022. That's quite a short cash runway, indicating the company must either reduce its annual cash burn or replenish its cash. Importantly, if we extrapolate recent cash burn trends, the cash runway would be noticeably longer. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.
How Is Amani Gold's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
In our view, Amani Gold doesn't yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just AU$901 in the last twelve months. Therefore, for the purposes of this analysis we'll focus on how the cash burn is tracking. Over the last year its cash burn actually increased by 45%, which suggests that management are increasing investment in future growth, but not too quickly. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but investors should be mindful of the fact that will shorten the cash runway. Amani Gold 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.
How Easily Can Amani Gold Raise Cash?
Since its cash burn is moving in the wrong direction, Amani Gold shareholders may wish to think ahead to when the company may need to raise more cash. Issuing new shares, or taking on debt, are the most common ways for a listed company to raise more money for its business. One of the main advantages held by publicly listed companies is that they can sell shares to investors to raise cash and fund growth. By comparing a company's annual cash burn to its total market capitalisation, we can estimate roughly how many shares it would have to issue in order to run the company for another year (at the same burn rate).
Since it has a market capitalisation of AU$36m, Amani Gold's AU$6.6m in cash burn equates to about 19% of its market value. Given that situation, it's fair to say the company wouldn't have much trouble raising more cash for growth, but shareholders would be somewhat diluted.
So, Should We Worry About Amani Gold's Cash Burn?
On this analysis of Amani Gold's cash burn, we think its cash burn relative to its market cap was reassuring, while its cash runway has us a bit worried. After looking at that range of measures, we think shareholders should be extremely attentive to how the company is using its cash, as the cash burn makes us uncomfortable. On another note, Amani Gold has 6 warning signs (and 4 which are a bit unpleasant) we think you should know about.
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.
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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.
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