Yahoo Finance Is Actual Experience (LON:ACT) In A Good Position To Invest In Growth?
We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. For example, biotech and mining exploration companies often lose money for years before finding success with a new treatment or mineral discovery. Having said that, unprofitable companies are risky because they could potentially burn through all their cash and become distressed.
So should Actual Experience (LON:ACT) shareholders be worried about its cash burn? In this article, we define cash burn as its annual (negative) free cash flow, which is the amount of money a company spends each year to fund its growth. First, we'll determine its cash runway by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves.
View our latest analysis for Actual Experience
When Might Actual Experience Run Out Of Money?
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 Actual Experience last reported its balance sheet in March 2020, it had zero debt and cash worth UK£4.4m. Importantly, its cash burn was UK£6.5m over the trailing twelve months. Therefore, from March 2020 it had roughly 8 months of cash runway. That's quite a short cash runway, indicating the company must either reduce its annual cash burn or replenish its cash. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.
How Well Is Actual Experience Growing?
Some investors might find it troubling that Actual Experience is actually increasing its cash burn, which is up 10% in the last year. At least the revenue was up 11% during the period, even if it wasn't up by much. Considering both these factors, we're not particularly excited by its growth profile. Of course, we've only taken a quick look at the stock's growth metrics, here. You can take a look at how Actual Experience has developed its business over time by checking this visualization of its revenue and earnings history.
How Hard Would It Be For Actual Experience To Raise More Cash For Growth?
Given the trajectory of Actual Experience's cash burn, many investors will already be thinking about how it might raise more cash in the future. Generally speaking, a listed business can raise new cash through issuing shares or taking on debt. Commonly, a business will sell new shares in itself to raise cash and 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).
Actual Experience's cash burn of UK£6.5m is about 9.3% of its UK£70m market capitalisation. That's a low proportion, so we figure the company would be able to raise more cash to fund growth, with a little dilution, or even to simply borrow some money.
So, Should We Worry About Actual Experience's Cash Burn?
On this analysis of Actual Experience's cash burn, we think its cash burn relative to its market cap was reassuring, while its cash runway has us a bit worried. Even though we don't think it has a problem with its cash burn, the analysis we've done in this article does suggest that shareholders should give some careful thought to the potential cost of raising more money in the future. On another note, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the company, and identified 6 warning signs for Actual Experience (2 shouldn't be ignored!) that you should be aware of before investing here.
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)
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. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
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