Yahoo Finance We're Excited To See How BARD1 Life Sciences (ASX:BD1) Uses Its Cash Hoard To Grow
There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. 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. Having said that, unprofitable companies are risky because they could potentially burn through all their cash and become distressed.
Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether BARD1 Life Sciences (ASX:BD1) 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. First, we'll determine its cash runway by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves.
Check out our latest analysis for BARD1 Life Sciences
Does BARD1 Life Sciences Have A Long Cash Runway?
A company's cash runway is calculated by dividing its cash hoard by its cash burn. As at June 2019, BARD1 Life Sciences had cash of AU$7.6m and no debt. In the last year, its cash burn was AU$1.6m. So it had a cash runway of about 4.8 years from June 2019. There's no doubt that this is a reassuringly long runway. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.
How Is BARD1 Life Sciences's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
In our view, BARD1 Life Sciences doesn't yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just AU$521k in the last twelve months. Therefore, for the purposes of this analysis we'll focus on how the cash burn is tracking. Even though it doesn't get us excited, the 20% reduction in cash burn year on year does suggest the company can continue operating for quite some time. BARD1 Life Sciences makes us a little nervous due to its lack of substantial operating revenue. We prefer most of the stocks on this list of stocks that analysts expect to grow.
How Easily Can BARD1 Life Sciences Raise Cash?
While BARD1 Life Sciences is showing a solid reduction in its cash burn, it's still worth considering how easily it could raise more cash, even just to fuel faster growth. 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.
BARD1 Life Sciences's cash burn of AU$1.6m is about 3.4% of its AU$46m market capitalisation. That's a low proportion, so we figure the company would be able to raise more cash to fund growth, with a little dilution, or even to simply borrow some money.
So, Should We Worry About BARD1 Life Sciences's Cash Burn?
It may already be apparent to you that we're relatively comfortable with the way BARD1 Life Sciences is burning through its cash. In particular, we think its cash runway stands out as evidence that the company is well on top of its spending. On this analysis its cash burn reduction was its weakest feature, but we are not concerned about it. Taking all the factors in this report into account, we're not at all worried about its cash burn, as the business appears well capitalized to spend as needs be. While it's important to consider hard data like the metrics discussed above, many investors would also be interested to note that BARD1 Life Sciences insiders have been trading shares in the company. Click here to find out if they have been buying or selling.
Of course BARD1 Life Sciences 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.
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.
We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.
