Yahoo Finance We're Keeping An Eye On Corvus Gold's (TSE:KOR) Cash Burn Rate
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. Having said that, unprofitable companies are risky because they could potentially burn through all their cash and become distressed.
So should Corvus Gold (TSE:KOR) shareholders be worried about its 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'.
See our latest analysis for Corvus Gold
Does Corvus Gold Have A Long Cash Runway?
A company's cash runway is the amount of time it would take to burn through its cash reserves at its current cash burn rate. In August 2019, Corvus Gold had CA$4.3m in cash, and was debt-free. Importantly, its cash burn was CA$9.1m over the trailing twelve months. That means it had a cash runway of around 6 months as of August 2019. With a cash runway that short, we strongly believe that the company must raise cash or else douse its cash burn promptly. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.
How Is Corvus Gold's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
Because Corvus Gold 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. As it happens, the company's cash burn reduced by 3.9% over the last year, which suggests that management may be mindful of the risks of their depleting cash reserves. Clearly, however, the crucial factor is whether the company will grow its business going forward. For that reason, it makes a lot of sense to take a look at our analyst forecasts for the company.
Can Corvus Gold Raise More Cash Easily?
While Corvus 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. 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).
Corvus Gold's cash burn of CA$9.1m is about 4.1% of its CA$222m market capitalisation. 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.
Is Corvus Gold's Cash Burn A Worry?
Even though its cash runway makes us a little nervous, we are compelled to mention that we thought Corvus Gold's cash burn relative to its market cap was relatively promising. Looking at the factors mentioned in this short report, we do think that its cash burn is a bit risky, and it does make us slightly nervous about the stock. 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 Corvus Gold CEO is paid..
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