We Think King River Resources (ASX:KRR) Needs To Drive Business Growth Carefully

Even when a business is losing money, it's possible for shareholders to make money if they buy a good business at the right price. For example, although Amazon.com made losses for many years after listing, if you had bought and held the shares since 1999, you would have made a fortune. But the harsh reality is that very many loss making companies burn through all their cash and go bankrupt.

So, the natural question for King River Resources (ASX:KRR) shareholders is whether they should be concerned by its rate of cash burn. 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 King River Resources

Does King River Resources Have A Long Cash Runway?

You can calculate a company's cash runway by dividing the amount of cash it has by the rate at which it is spending that cash. In December 2019, King River Resources had AU$794k in cash, and was debt-free. Looking at the last year, the company burnt through AU$3.3m. Therefore, from December 2019 it had roughly 3 months of cash runway. That's a very short cash runway which indicates an imminent need to douse the cash burn or find more funding. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.

How Is King River Resources's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

Whilst it's great to see that King River Resources has already begun generating revenue from operations, last year it only produced AU$4.5k, so we don't think it is generating significant revenue, at this point. 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. Given the length of the cash runway, we'd interpret the 21% reduction in cash burn, in twelve months, as prudent if not necessary for capital preservation. King River Resources 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.

Can King River Resources Raise More Cash Easily?

Even though it has reduced its cash burn recently, shareholders should still consider how easy it would be for King River Resources to raise more 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).

King River Resources's cash burn of AU$3.3m is about 4.8% of its AU$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 King River Resources's Cash Burn?

On this analysis of King River Resources's cash burn, we think its cash burn relative to its market cap was reassuring, while its cash runway has us a bit worried. Summing up, we think the King River Resources's cash burn is a risk, based on the factors we mentioned in this article. On another note, King River Resources has 5 warning signs (and 3 which make us uncomfortable) we think you should know about.

If you would prefer to check out another company with better fundamentals, then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt or this list of stocks which are all forecast to grow.

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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.