IMPACT Silver (CVE:IPT) Is In A Strong Position To Grow Its Business

There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. 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, the natural question for IMPACT Silver (CVE:IPT) shareholders is whether they should be concerned by its rate of cash burn. For the purposes of this article, cash burn is the annual rate at which an unprofitable company spends cash to fund its growth; its negative free cash flow. Let's start with an examination of the business' cash, relative to its cash burn.

Check out our latest analysis for IMPACT Silver

When Might IMPACT Silver 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. When IMPACT Silver last reported its balance sheet in December 2021, it had zero debt and cash worth CA$21m. Importantly, its cash burn was CA$622k over the trailing twelve months. So it had a very long cash runway of many years from December 2021. 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.

Is IMPACT Silver's Revenue Growing?

Given that IMPACT Silver actually had positive free cash flow last year, before burning cash this year, we'll focus on its operating revenue to get a measure of the business trajectory. Although it's hardly brilliant growth, it's good to see the company grew revenue by 14% in the last year. In reality, this article only makes a short study of the company's growth data. You can take a look at how IMPACT Silver has developed its business over time by checking this visualization of its revenue and earnings history.

How Easily Can IMPACT Silver Raise Cash?

While IMPACT Silver is showing solid revenue growth, 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. 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.

IMPACT Silver's cash burn of CA$622k is about 0.9% of its CA$73m market capitalisation. That means it could easily issue a few shares to fund more growth, and might well be in a position to borrow cheaply.

So, Should We Worry About IMPACT Silver's Cash Burn?

As you can probably tell by now, we're not too worried about IMPACT Silver's cash burn. For example, we think its cash runway suggests that the company is on a good path. Its revenue growth wasn't quite as good, but was still rather encouraging! Taking all the factors in this report into account, we're not at all worried about its cash burn, as the business appears well capitalized to spend as needs be. Readers need to have a sound understanding of business risks before investing in a stock, and we've spotted 2 warning signs for IMPACT Silver that potential shareholders should take into account before putting money into a stock.

Of course IMPACT Silver 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.