We Think Gunpoint Exploration (CVE:GUN) Can Easily Afford To Drive Business Growth

There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. 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 Gunpoint Exploration (CVE:GUN) 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). Let's start with an examination of the business' cash, relative to its cash burn.

View our latest analysis for Gunpoint Exploration

When Might Gunpoint Exploration 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 September 2022, Gunpoint Exploration had CA$1.6m in cash, and was debt-free. In the last year, its cash burn was CA$267k. So it had a cash runway of about 6.1 years from September 2022. While this is only one measure of its cash burn situation, it certainly gives us the impression that holders have nothing to worry about. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.

How Is Gunpoint Exploration's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

Because Gunpoint Exploration isn't currently generating revenue, we consider it an early-stage 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 27% 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 Gunpoint Exploration 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 Gunpoint Exploration Raise More Cash Easily?

Even though it has reduced its cash burn recently, shareholders should still consider how easy it would be for Gunpoint Exploration to raise more cash in the future. Companies can raise capital through either debt or equity. Commonly, a business will sell new shares in itself to raise cash and drive 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).

Gunpoint Exploration's cash burn of CA$267k is about 0.8% of its CA$35m market capitalisation. So it could almost certainly just borrow a little to fund another year's growth, or else easily raise the cash by issuing a few shares.

How Risky Is Gunpoint Exploration's Cash Burn Situation?

As you can probably tell by now, we're not too worried about Gunpoint Exploration's cash burn. For example, we think its cash runway suggests that the company is on a good path. And even though its cash burn reduction wasn't quite as impressive, it was still a positive. After taking into account the various metrics mentioned in this report, we're pretty comfortable with how the company is spending its cash. Separately, we looked at different risks affecting the company and spotted 3 warning signs for Gunpoint Exploration (of which 2 are a bit unpleasant!) you should know about.

Of course Gunpoint Exploration 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.