There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. For example, EV Nickel (CVE:EVNI) shareholders have done very well over the last year, with the share price soaring by 586%. Having said that, unprofitable companies are risky because they could potentially burn through all their cash and become distressed.

So notwithstanding the buoyant share price, we think it's well worth asking whether EV Nickel's cash burn is too risky. 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). First, we'll determine its cash runway by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves.

See our latest analysis for EV Nickel

How Long Is EV Nickel'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. When EV Nickel last reported its March 2024 balance sheet in May 2024, it had zero debt and cash worth CA$6.8m. Looking at the last year, the company burnt through CA$3.1m. So it had a cash runway of about 2.2 years from March 2024. Arguably, that's a prudent and sensible length of runway to have. You can see how its cash balance has changed over time in the image below.

How Is EV Nickel's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

Because EV Nickel isn't currently generating revenue, we consider it an early-stage business. So while we can't look to sales to understand growth, we can look at how the cash burn is changing to understand how expenditure is trending over time. While it hardly paints a picture of imminent growth, the fact that it has reduced its cash burn by 40% over the last year suggests some degree of prudence. EV Nickel 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.

Can EV Nickel Raise More Cash Easily?

While EV Nickel 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. Issuing new shares, or taking on debt, are the most common ways for a listed company to raise more money for its business. Many companies end up issuing new shares to fund future 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).