Yahoo Finance Emyria (ASX:EMD) Is In A Good Position To Deliver On Growth Plans
There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. By way of example, Emyria (ASX:EMD) has seen its share price rise 238% over the last year, delighting many shareholders. 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 Emyria's cash burn is too risky. 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. We'll start by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves in order to calculate its cash runway.
Check out our latest analysis for Emyria
How Long Is Emyria's Cash Runway?
You can calculate a company's cash runway by dividing the amount of cash it has by the rate at which it is spending that cash. In June 2021, Emyria had AU$6.5m in cash, and was debt-free. Looking at the last year, the company burnt through AU$4.6m. That means it had a cash runway of around 17 months as of June 2021. That's not too bad, but it's fair to say the end of the cash runway is in sight, unless cash burn reduces drastically. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.
How Is Emyria's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
In our view, Emyria doesn't yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just AU$2.0m 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. Cash burn was pretty flat over the last year, which suggests that management are holding spending steady while the business advances its strategy. In reality, this article only makes a short study of the company's growth data. This graph of historic revenue growth shows how Emyria is building its business over time.
Can Emyria Raise More Cash Easily?
While Emyria 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. 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).
Emyria's cash burn of AU$4.6m is about 7.2% of its AU$64m 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.
How Risky Is Emyria's Cash Burn Situation?
Emyria appears to be in pretty good health when it comes to its cash burn situation. Not only was its cash runway quite good, but its cash burn relative to its market cap was a real positive. Cash burning companies are always on the riskier side of things, but after considering all of the factors discussed in this short piece, we're not too worried about its rate of cash burn. An in-depth examination of risks revealed 4 warning signs for Emyria that readers should think about before committing capital to this stock.
If you would prefer to check out another company with better fundamentals, then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt or this list of stocks which are all forecast to grow.
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
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