We're Not Worried About Prairie Mining's (ASX:PDZ) Cash Burn

We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. For example, biotech and mining exploration companies often lose money for years before finding success with a new treatment or mineral discovery. But the harsh reality is that very many loss making companies burn through all their cash and go bankrupt.

Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether Prairie Mining (ASX:PDZ) shareholders should be worried about its 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). We'll start by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves in order to calculate its cash runway.

See our latest analysis for Prairie Mining

Does Prairie Mining Have A Long Cash Runway?

A company's cash runway is calculated by dividing its cash hoard by its cash burn. When Prairie Mining last reported its balance sheet in December 2020, it had zero debt and cash worth AU$6.0m. In the last year, its cash burn was AU$2.1m. Therefore, from December 2020 it had 2.9 years of cash runway. Arguably, that's a prudent and sensible length of runway to have. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.

How Is Prairie Mining's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

Whilst it's great to see that Prairie Mining has already begun generating revenue from operations, last year it only produced AU$389k, 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. While it hardly paints a picture of imminent growth, the fact that it has reduced its cash burn by 49% over the last year suggests some degree of prudence. Admittedly, we're a bit cautious of Prairie Mining due to its lack of significant operating revenues. We prefer most of the stocks on this list of stocks that analysts expect to grow.

Can Prairie Mining Raise More Cash Easily?

While Prairie Mining is showing a solid reduction in its cash burn, it's still worth considering how easily it could raise more cash, even just to fuel faster growth. Generally speaking, a listed business can raise new cash through issuing shares or taking on debt. One of the main advantages held by publicly listed companies is that they can sell shares to investors to raise cash and fund 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 AU$57m, Prairie Mining's AU$2.1m in cash burn equates to about 3.6% of its 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 Prairie Mining's Cash Burn?

As you can probably tell by now, we're not too worried about Prairie Mining'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 reduction 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. Separately, we looked at different risks affecting the company and spotted 3 warning signs for Prairie Mining (of which 1 shouldn't be ignored!) 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.
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