Yahoo Finance Here's Why We're Not Too Worried About Geron's (NASDAQ:GERN) Cash Burn Situation
We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. For example, although Amazon.com made losses for many years after listing, if you had bought and held the shares since 1999, you would have made a fortune. 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 Geron (NASDAQ:GERN) shareholders should be worried about its cash burn. For the purposes of this article, cash burn is the annual rate at which an unprofitable company spends cash to fund its growth; its negative free cash flow. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.
Check out our latest analysis for Geron
How Long Is Geron's Cash Runway?
A company's cash runway is calculated by dividing its cash hoard by its cash burn. When Geron last reported its balance sheet in December 2019, it had zero debt and cash worth US$139m. Importantly, its cash burn was US$44m over the trailing twelve months. That means it had a cash runway of about 3.1 years as of December 2019. Importantly, analysts think that Geron will reach cashflow breakeven in 4 years. That means unless the company reduces its cash burn quickly, it may well look to raise more cash. You can see how its cash balance has changed over time in the image below.
How Is Geron's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
In our view, Geron doesn't yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just US$460k in the last twelve months. Therefore, for the purposes of this analysis we'll focus on how the cash burn is tracking. In fact, it ramped its spending strongly over the last year, increasing cash burn by 110%. It's fair to say that sort of rate of increase cannot be maintained for very long, without putting pressure on the balance sheet. Clearly, however, the crucial factor is whether the company will grow its business going forward. For that reason, it makes a lot of sense to take a look at our analyst forecasts for the company.
How Hard Would It Be For Geron To Raise More Cash For Growth?
Given its cash burn trajectory, Geron shareholders may wish to consider how easily it could raise more cash, despite its solid cash runway. Companies can raise capital through either debt or equity. 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.
Since it has a market capitalisation of US$210m, Geron's US$44m in cash burn equates to about 21% of its market value. That's not insignificant, and if the company had to sell enough shares to fund another year's growth at the current share price, you'd likely witness fairly costly dilution.
So, Should We Worry About Geron's Cash Burn?
On this analysis of Geron's cash burn, we think its cash runway was reassuring, while its increasing cash burn has us a bit worried. One real positive is that analysts are forecasting that the company will reach breakeven. 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. On another note, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the company, and identified 4 warning signs for Geron (1 doesn't sit too well with us!) that you should be aware of before investing here.
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.
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