We're Hopeful That Silver Mines (ASX:SVL) Will Use Its Cash Wisely

We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. 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. Nonetheless, only a fool would ignore the risk that a loss making company burns through its cash too quickly.

So should Silver Mines (ASX:SVL) shareholders 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. We'll start by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves in order to calculate its cash runway.

View our latest analysis for Silver Mines

SWOT Analysis for Silver Mines

When Might Silver Mines Run Out Of Money?

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. As at December 2022, Silver Mines had cash of AU$10m and no debt. Importantly, its cash burn was AU$7.1m over the trailing twelve months. Therefore, from December 2022 it had roughly 17 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. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.

How Is Silver Mines' Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

In our view, Silver Mines doesn't yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just AU$159k 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. During the last twelve months, its cash burn actually ramped up 71%. 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. Admittedly, we're a bit cautious of Silver Mines due to its lack of significant operating revenues. So we'd generally prefer stocks from this list of stocks that have analysts forecasting growth.

How Easily Can Silver Mines Raise Cash?

Given its cash burn trajectory, Silver Mines shareholders may wish to consider how easily it could raise more cash, despite its solid cash runway. 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 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$246m, Silver Mines' AU$7.1m in cash burn equates to about 2.9% of its market value. That means it could easily issue a few shares to fund more growth, and might well be in a position to borrow cheaply.

How Risky Is Silver Mines' Cash Burn Situation?

Even though its increasing cash burn makes us a little nervous, we are compelled to mention that we thought Silver Mines' cash burn relative to its market cap was relatively promising. Cash burning companies are always on the riskier side of things, but after considering all of the factors discussed in this short piece, we're not too worried about its rate of cash burn. On another note, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the company, and identified 3 warning signs for Silver Mines (2 are concerning!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

Of course Silver Mines may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see this free collection of companies boasting high return on equity, or this list of stocks that insiders are buying.

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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.