Yahoo Finance We Think Khiron Life Sciences (CVE:KHRN) Needs To Drive Business Growth Carefully
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. Nonetheless, only a fool would ignore the risk that a loss making company burns through its cash too quickly.
So, the natural question for Khiron Life Sciences (CVE:KHRN) shareholders is whether they should be concerned by its rate of cash burn. 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. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.
View our latest analysis for Khiron Life Sciences
When Might Khiron Life Sciences Run Out Of Money?
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 September 2019, Khiron Life Sciences had cash of CA$48m and such minimal debt that we can ignore it for the purposes of this analysis. In the last year, its cash burn was CA$31m. That means it had a cash runway of around 18 months as of September 2019. Notably, analysts forecast that Khiron Life Sciences will break even (at a free cash flow level) in about 3 years. That means unless the company reduces its cash burn quickly, it may well look to raise more cash. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.
How Is Khiron Life Sciences's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
Although Khiron Life Sciences had revenue of CA$8.0m in the last twelve months, its operating revenue was only CA$8.0m in that time period. We don't think that's enough operating revenue for us to understand too much from revenue growth rates, since the company is growing off a low base. So we'll focus on the cash burn, today. The skyrocketing cash burn up 120% year on year certainly tests our nerves. It's fair to say that sort of rate of increase cannot be maintained for very long, without putting pressure on the balance sheet. Clearly, however, the crucial factor is whether the company will grow its business going forward. So you might want to take a peek at how much the company is expected to grow in the next few years.
Can Khiron Life Sciences Raise More Cash Easily?
While Khiron Life Sciences does have a solid cash runway, its cash burn trajectory may have some shareholders thinking ahead to when the company may need to raise more cash. Issuing new shares, or taking on debt, are the most common ways for a listed company to raise more money for its business. One of the main advantages held by publicly listed companies is that they can sell shares to investors to raise cash to fund 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).
Khiron Life Sciences has a market capitalisation of CA$114m and burnt through CA$31m last year, which is 28% of the company's market value. That's fairly notable cash burn, so if the company had to sell shares to cover the cost of another year's operations, shareholders would suffer some costly dilution.
So, Should We Worry About Khiron Life Sciences's Cash Burn?
On this analysis of Khiron Life Sciences's cash burn, we think its cash runway was reassuring, while its increasing cash burn has us a bit worried. Shareholders can take heart from the fact that analysts are forecasting it will reach breakeven. Summing up, we think the Khiron Life Sciences's cash burn is a risk, based on the factors we mentioned in this article. Notably, our data indicates that Khiron Life Sciences 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.
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