Just because a business does not make any money, does not mean that the stock will go down. 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. But the harsh reality is that very many loss making companies burn through all their cash and go bankrupt.
So should Factor Therapeutics (ASX:FTT) shareholders be worried about its cash burn? In this article, we define cash burn as its annual (negative) free cash flow, which is the amount of money a company spends each year to fund its growth. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.
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How Long Is Factor Therapeutics's 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. In June 2019, Factor Therapeutics had AU$3.4m in cash, and was debt-free. Looking at the last year, the company burnt through AU$3.6m. Therefore, from June 2019 it had roughly 11 months of cash runway. That's quite a short cash runway, indicating the company must either reduce its annual cash burn or replenish its cash. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.
How Is Factor Therapeutics's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
Although Factor Therapeutics reported revenue of AU$2.4m last year, it didn't actually have any revenue from operations. To us, that makes it a pre-revenue company, so we'll look to its cash burn trajectory as an assessment of its cash burn situation. As it happens, the company's cash burn reduced by 20% over the last year, which suggests that management may be mindful of the risks of their depleting cash reserves. Admittedly, we're a bit cautious of Factor Therapeutics due to its lack of significant operating revenues. So we'd generally prefer stocks from this list of stocks that have analysts forecasting growth.
How Easily Can Factor Therapeutics Raise Cash?
Even though it has reduced its cash burn recently, shareholders should still consider how easy it would be for Factor Therapeutics to raise more cash in the future. 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 to fund growth. By looking at a company's cash burn relative to its market capitalisation, we gain insight on how much shareholders would be diluted if the company needed to raise enough cash to cover another year's cash burn.