Yahoo Finance Is Tudor Gold (CVE:TUD) In A Good Position To Deliver On Growth Plans?
Just because a business does not make any money, does not mean that the stock will go down. Indeed, Tudor Gold (CVE:TUD) stock is up 118% in the last year, providing strong gains for shareholders. Having said that, unprofitable companies are risky because they could potentially burn through all their cash and become distressed.
Given its strong share price performance, we think it's worthwhile for Tudor Gold shareholders to consider whether its cash burn is concerning. 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. First, we'll determine its cash runway by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves.
See our latest analysis for Tudor Gold
Does Tudor Gold Have A Long Cash Runway?
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 December 2019, Tudor Gold had CA$6.1m in cash, and was debt-free. In the last year, its cash burn was CA$9.1m. So it had a cash runway of approximately 8 months from December 2019. 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 Is Tudor Gold's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
Because Tudor Gold isn't currently generating revenue, we consider it an early-stage business. So while we can't look to sales to understand growth, we can look at how the cash burn is changing to understand how expenditure is trending over time. Over the last year its cash burn actually increased by a very significant 96%. Oftentimes, increased cash burn simply means a company is accelerating its business development, but one should always be mindful that this causes the cash runway to shrink. Tudor Gold makes us a little nervous due to its lack of substantial operating revenue. So we'd generally prefer stocks from this list of stocks that have analysts forecasting growth.
How Easily Can Tudor Gold Raise Cash?
Since its cash burn is moving in the wrong direction, Tudor Gold 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. Many companies end up issuing new shares to fund future 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.
Tudor Gold has a market capitalisation of CA$126m and burnt through CA$9.1m last year, which is 7.2% of the company's market value. 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.
So, Should We Worry About Tudor Gold's Cash Burn?
Even though its increasing cash burn makes us a little nervous, we are compelled to mention that we thought Tudor Gold's cash burn relative to its market cap was relatively promising. Summing up, we think the Tudor Gold's cash burn is a risk, based on the factors we mentioned in this article. Separately, we looked at different risks affecting the company and spotted 5 warning signs for Tudor Gold (of which 2 don't sit too well with us!) you should know about.
Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of companies insiders are buying, and this list of stocks growth stocks (according to analyst forecasts)
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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. Thank you for reading.
