Yahoo Finance Can Orosur Mining (TSE:OMI) Afford To Invest In Growth?
There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. 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. But while the successes are well known, investors should not ignore the very many unprofitable companies that simply burn through all their cash and collapse.
Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether Orosur Mining (TSE:OMI) shareholders should be worried about its 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.
View our latest analysis for Orosur Mining
When Might Orosur Mining 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. In August 2019, Orosur Mining had US$548k in cash, and was debt-free. Looking at the last year, the company burnt through US$2.8m. So it had a cash runway of approximately 2 months from August 2019. To be frank we are alarmed by how short that cash runway is! Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.
How Is Orosur Mining's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
In the last year, Orosur Mining did book revenue of US$12m, but its revenue from operations was less, at just US$12m. 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. Over the last year its cash burn actually increased by 22%, 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. In reality, this article only makes a short study of the company's growth data. You can take a look at how Orosur Mining has developed its business over time by checking this visualization of its revenue and earnings history.
Can Orosur Mining Raise More Cash Easily?
Given its cash burn trajectory, Orosur Mining 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. 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).
Orosur Mining's cash burn of US$2.8m is about 50% of its CA$7.5m market capitalisation. From this perspective, it seems that the company spent a hugh amount relative to its market value, and we'd be very wary of a painful capital raising.
Is Orosur Mining's Cash Burn A Worry?
As you can probably tell by now, we're rather concerned about Orosur Mining's cash burn. In particular, we think its cash runway suggests it isn't in a good position to keep funding growth. While not as bad as its cash runway, its increasing cash burn is also a concern, and considering everything mentioned above, we're struggling to find much to be optimistic about. Looking at the metrics in this article all together, we consider its cash burn situation to be rather dangerous, and likely to cost shareholders one way or the other. 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 Orosur Mining CEO is paid..
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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