In This Article:
Even when a business is losing money, it's possible for shareholders to make money if they buy a good business at the right price. For example, biotech and mining exploration companies often lose money for years before finding success with a new treatment or mineral discovery. But the harsh reality is that very many loss making companies burn through all their cash and go bankrupt.
Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether Knosys (ASX:KNO) 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'.
See our latest analysis for Knosys
Does Knosys Have A Long Cash Runway?
A company's cash runway is the amount of time it would take to burn through its cash reserves at its current cash burn rate. When Knosys last reported its balance sheet in June 2020, it had zero debt and cash worth AU$2.3m. In the last year, its cash burn was AU$507k. That means it had a cash runway of about 4.6 years as of June 2020. A runway of this length affords the company the time and space it needs to develop the business. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.
How Well Is Knosys Growing?
On balance, we think it's mildly positive that Knosys trimmed its cash burn by 16% over the last twelve months. Revenue also improved during the period, increasing by 8.4%. On balance, we'd say the company is improving over time. In reality, this article only makes a short study of the company's growth data. You can take a look at how Knosys has developed its business over time by checking this visualization of its revenue and earnings history.
Can Knosys Raise More Cash Easily?
There's no doubt Knosys seems to be in a fairly good position, when it comes to managing its cash burn, but even if it's only hypothetical, it's always worth asking how easily it could raise more money to fund growth. Generally speaking, a listed business can raise new cash through issuing shares or taking on debt. One of the main advantages held by publicly listed companies is that they can sell shares to investors to raise cash and 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.
Knosys has a market capitalisation of AU$27m and burnt through AU$507k last year, which is 1.9% of the company's market value. So it could almost certainly just borrow a little to fund another year's growth, or else easily raise the cash by issuing a few shares.