Yahoo Finance Here's Why Altamira Gold (CVE:ALTA) Must Use Its Cash Wisely
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 should Altamira Gold (CVE:ALTA) shareholders be worried about its cash burn? 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). Let's start with an examination of the business's cash, relative to its cash burn.
View our latest analysis for Altamira Gold
How Long Is Altamira Gold's Cash Runway?
A company's cash runway is calculated by dividing its cash hoard by its cash burn. As at May 2019, Altamira Gold had cash of CA$778k and no debt. Importantly, its cash burn was CA$1.8m over the trailing twelve months. So it had a cash runway of approximately 5 months from May 2019. With a cash runway that short, we strongly believe that the company must raise cash or else douse its cash burn promptly. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.
How Is Altamira Gold's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
Because Altamira Gold 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. Given the length of the cash runway, we'd interpret the 38% reduction in cash burn, in twelve months, as prudent if not necessary for capital preservation. Altamira Gold makes us a little nervous due to its lack of substantial operating revenue. We prefer most of the stocks on this list of stocks that analysts expect to grow.
How Easily Can Altamira Gold Raise Cash?
While Altamira Gold 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. Companies can raise capital through either debt or equity. Commonly, a business will sell new shares in itself to raise cash to 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).
Altamira Gold has a market capitalisation of CA$4.9m and burnt through CA$1.8m last year, which is 37% of the company's market value. That's not insignificant, and if the company had to sell enough shares to fund another year's growth at the current share price, you'd likely witness fairly costly dilution.
So, Should We Worry About Altamira Gold's Cash Burn?
Even though its cash runway makes us a little nervous, we are compelled to mention that we thought Altamira Gold's cash burn reduction was relatively promising. After looking at that range of measures, we think shareholders should be extremely attentive to how the company is using its cash, as the cash burn makes us uncomfortable. Notably, our data indicates that Altamira Gold insiders have been trading the shares. You can discover if they are buyers or sellers by clicking on this link.
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.
We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.
If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
