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 while history lauds those rare successes, those that fail are often forgotten; who remembers Pets.com?

So, the natural question for Emmerson Resources (ASX:ERM) shareholders is whether they should be concerned by its rate of 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'.

View our latest analysis for Emmerson Resources

How Long Is Emmerson Resources' Cash Runway?

A company's cash runway is calculated by dividing its cash hoard by its cash burn. When Emmerson Resources last reported its balance sheet in June 2022, it had zero debt and cash worth AU$9.0m. In the last year, its cash burn was AU$4.0m. So it had a cash runway of about 2.2 years from June 2022. That's decent, giving the company a couple years to develop its business. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.

How Is Emmerson Resources' Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

In our view, Emmerson Resources doesn't yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just AU$85k in the last twelve months. As a result, we think it's a bit early to focus on the revenue growth, so we'll limit ourselves to looking at how the cash burn is changing over time. With the cash burn rate up 27% in the last year, it seems that the company is ratcheting up investment in the business over time. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but investors should be mindful of the fact that will shorten the cash runway. Emmerson Resources 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.

How Easily Can Emmerson Resources Raise Cash?

Given its cash burn trajectory, Emmerson Resources shareholders may wish to consider how easily it could raise more cash, despite its solid cash runway. Generally speaking, a listed business can raise new cash through issuing shares or taking on debt. Commonly, a business will sell new shares in itself to raise cash and drive 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).