Yahoo Finance We're Not Worried About Bluechiip's (ASX:BCT) Cash Burn
We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. 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.
Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether Bluechiip (ASX:BCT) shareholders should 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 Bluechiip
Does Bluechiip Have A Long Cash Runway?
A company's cash runway is calculated by dividing its cash hoard by its cash burn. When Bluechiip last reported its balance sheet in June 2021, it had zero debt and cash worth AU$5.9m. Importantly, its cash burn was AU$2.0m over the trailing twelve months. So it had a cash runway of about 3.0 years from June 2021. That's decent, giving the company a couple years to develop its business. You can see how its cash balance has changed over time in the image below.
How Is Bluechiip's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
In our view, Bluechiip doesn't yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just AU$51k in the last twelve months. As a result, we think it's a bit early to focus on the revenue growth, so we'll limit ourselves to looking at how the cash burn is changing over time. The 58% reduction in its cash burn over the last twelve months may be good for protecting the balance sheet but it hardly points to imminent growth. Bluechiip makes us a little nervous due to its lack of substantial operating revenue. We prefer most of the stocks on this list of stocks that analysts expect to grow.
How Easily Can Bluechiip Raise Cash?
There's no doubt Bluechiip's rapidly reducing cash burn brings comfort, but even if it's only hypothetical, it's always worth asking how easily it could raise more money to fund further growth. 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 looking at a company's cash burn relative to its market capitalisation, we gain insight on how much shareholders would be diluted if the company needed to raise enough cash to cover another year's cash burn.
Since it has a market capitalisation of AU$29m, Bluechiip's AU$2.0m in cash burn equates to about 6.8% 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.
Is Bluechiip's Cash Burn A Worry?
As you can probably tell by now, we're not too worried about Bluechiip's cash burn. In particular, we think its cash runway stands out as evidence that the company is well on top of its spending. And even its cash burn relative to its market cap was very encouraging. Looking at all the measures in this article, together, we're not worried about its rate of cash burn; the company seems well on top of its medium-term spending needs. On another note, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the company, and identified 4 warning signs for Bluechiip (2 are a bit concerning!) 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)
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. 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.
