Yahoo Finance We're Not Very Worried About Clontarf Energy's (LON:CLON) Cash Burn Rate
We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. Indeed, Clontarf Energy (LON:CLON) stock is up 172% in the last year, providing strong gains for shareholders. 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.
In light of its strong share price run, we think now is a good time to investigate how risky Clontarf Energy's cash burn is. For the purpose of this article, we'll define cash burn as the amount of cash the company is spending each year to fund its growth (also called 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 Clontarf Energy
When Might Clontarf Energy Run Out Of Money?
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 June 2019, Clontarf Energy had UK£425k in cash, and was debt-free. Looking at the last year, the company burnt through UK£274k. Therefore, from June 2019 it had roughly 19 months of cash runway. That's not too bad, but it's fair to say the end of the cash runway is in sight, unless cash burn reduces drastically. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.
How Is Clontarf Energy's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
Clontarf Energy didn't record any revenue over the last year, indicating that it's an early stage company still developing its 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. Even though it doesn't get us excited, the 24% reduction in cash burn year on year does suggest the company can continue operating for quite some time. Admittedly, we're a bit cautious of Clontarf Energy due to its lack of significant operating revenues. So we'd generally prefer stocks from this list of stocks that have analysts forecasting growth.
Can Clontarf Energy Raise More Cash Easily?
Even though it has reduced its cash burn recently, shareholders should still consider how easy it would be for Clontarf Energy to raise more cash in the future. 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.
Since it has a market capitalisation of UK£4.5m, Clontarf Energy's UK£274k in cash burn equates to about 6.1% of its market value. 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 Clontarf Energy's Cash Burn?
The good news is that in our view Clontarf Energy's cash burn situation gives shareholders real reason for optimism. One the one hand we have its solid cash burn reduction, while on the other it can also boast very strong cash burn relative to its market cap. Based on the factors mentioned in this article, we think its cash burn situation warrants some attention from shareholders, but we don't think they should be worried. Taking a deeper dive, we've spotted 5 warning signs for Clontarf Energy you should be aware of, and 2 of them shouldn't be ignored.
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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