Yahoo Finance Here's Why We're A Bit Worried About Namibia Critical Metals's (CVE:NMI) Cash Burn Situation
We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. For example, although Amazon.com made losses for many years after listing, if you had bought and held the shares since 1999, you would have made a fortune. But the harsh reality is that very many loss making companies burn through all their cash and go bankrupt.
So should Namibia Critical Metals (CVE:NMI) 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). The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.
Check out our latest analysis for Namibia Critical Metals
Does Namibia Critical Metals Have A Long Cash Runway?
A cash runway is defined as the length of time it would take a company to run out of money if it kept spending at its current rate of cash burn. When Namibia Critical Metals last reported its balance sheet in August 2019, it had zero debt and cash worth CA$468k. Importantly, its cash burn was CA$2.5m over the trailing twelve months. So it had a cash runway of approximately 2 months from August 2019. It's extremely surprising to us that the company has allowed its cash runway to get that short! You can see how its cash balance has changed over time in the image below.
How Is Namibia Critical Metals's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
Because Namibia Critical Metals 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. Over the last year its cash burn actually increased by 27%, which suggests that management are increasing investment in future growth, but not too quickly. However, the company's true cash runway will therefore be shorter than suggested above, if spending continues to increase. Namibia Critical Metals 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 Hard Would It Be For Namibia Critical Metals To Raise More Cash For Growth?
Given its cash burn trajectory, Namibia Critical Metals shareholders should already be thinking about how easy it might be for it to raise further cash in the future. Issuing new shares, or taking on debt, are the most common ways for a listed company to raise more money for its business. Commonly, a business will sell new shares in itself to raise cash to drive growth. We can compare a company's cash burn to its market capitalisation to get a sense for how many new shares a company would have to issue to fund one year's operations.
Namibia Critical Metals has a market capitalisation of CA$47m and burnt through CA$2.5m last year, which is 5.2% of the company's market value. Given that is a rather small percentage, it would probably be really easy for the company to fund another year's growth by issuing some new shares to investors, or even by taking out a loan.
How Risky Is Namibia Critical Metals's Cash Burn Situation?
Even though its cash runway makes us a little nervous, we are compelled to mention that we thought Namibia Critical Metals's cash burn relative to its market cap 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. While we always like to monitor cash burn for early stage companies, qualitative factors such as the CEO pay can also shed light on the situation. Click here to see free what the Namibia Critical Metals CEO is paid..
Of course Namibia Critical Metals may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see this free collection of companies boasting high return on equity, or this list of stocks that insiders are buying.
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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.
