Yahoo Finance Loop Insights (CVE:MTRX) Is Very Risky Based On Its Cash Burn
Even when a business is losing money, it's possible for shareholders to make money if they buy a good business at the right price. 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 while history lauds those rare successes, those that fail are often forgotten; who remembers Pets.com?
So, the natural question for Loop Insights (CVE:MTRX) shareholders is whether they should be concerned by its rate of cash burn. In this report, we will consider the company's annual negative free cash flow, henceforth referring to it as the 'cash burn'. First, we'll determine its cash runway by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves.
Check out our latest analysis for Loop Insights
How Long Is Loop Insights'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. As at December 2019, Loop Insights had cash of CA$61k and such minimal debt that we can ignore it for the purposes of this analysis. Importantly, its cash burn was CA$3.9m over the trailing twelve months. So it seems to us it had a cash runway of less than two months from December 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 Loop Insights's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
Because Loop Insights isn't currently generating revenue, we consider it an early-stage business. Nonetheless, we can still examine its cash burn trajectory as part of our assessment of its cash burn situation. Over the last year its cash burn actually increased by 39%, which suggests that management are increasing investment in future growth, but not too quickly. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but investors should be mindful of the fact that will shorten the cash runway. Loop Insights 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 Loop Insights Raise Cash?
Since its cash burn is moving in the wrong direction, Loop Insights shareholders may wish to think ahead to when the company may need to raise more cash. Companies can raise capital through either debt or equity. 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.
Loop Insights has a market capitalisation of CA$6.1m and burnt through CA$3.9m last year, which is 64% of the company's market value. Given how large that cash burn is, relative to the market value of the entire company, we'd consider it to be a high risk stock, with the real possibility of extreme dilution.
So, Should We Worry About Loop Insights's Cash Burn?
There are no prizes for guessing that we think Loop Insights's cash burn is a bit of a worry. In particular, we think its cash runway suggests it isn't in a good position to keep funding growth. And although we accept its increasing cash burn wasn't as worrying as its cash runway, it was still a real negative; as indeed were all the factors we considered in this article. The measures we've considered in this article lead us to believe its cash burn is actually quite concerning, and its weak cash position seems likely to cost shareholders one way or another. Taking a deeper dive, we've spotted 4 warning signs for Loop Insights you should be aware of, and 2 of them are concerning.
Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies, and this list of stocks growth stocks (according to analyst forecasts)
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