Here's Why We're Not At All Concerned With Bit Brother's (NASDAQ:BTB) Cash Burn Situation

We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. 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. But while history lauds those rare successes, those that fail are often forgotten; who remembers Pets.com?

So should Bit Brother (NASDAQ:BTB) 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. First, we'll determine its cash runway by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves.

Check out our latest analysis for Bit Brother

Does Bit Brother 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. When Bit Brother last reported its balance sheet in December 2020, it had zero debt and cash worth US$17m. In the last year, its cash burn was US$1.4m. That means it had a cash runway of very many years as of December 2020. While this is only one measure of its cash burn situation, it certainly gives us the impression that holders have nothing to worry about. You can see how its cash balance has changed over time in the image below.

How Is Bit Brother's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

In our view, Bit Brother doesn't yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just US$4.3m 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. The 67% reduction in its cash burn over the last twelve months may be good for protecting the balance sheet but it hardly points to imminent growth. Of course, we've only taken a quick look at the stock's growth metrics, here. You can take a look at how Bit Brother is growing revenue over time by checking this visualization of past revenue growth.

Can Bit Brother Raise More Cash Easily?

There's no doubt Bit Brother's rapidly reducing cash burn brings comfort, but even if it's only hypothetical, it's always worth asking how easily it could raise more money to fund further growth. Companies can raise capital through either debt or equity. Commonly, a business will sell new shares in itself to raise cash and drive 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.

Bit Brother's cash burn of US$1.4m is about 4.1% of its US$34m market capitalisation. 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 Bit Brother's Cash Burn?

It may already be apparent to you that we're relatively comfortable with the way Bit Brother is burning through its cash. 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. 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. On another note, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the company, and identified 4 warning signs for Bit Brother (1 is a bit unpleasant!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies, and this list of stocks growth stocks (according to analyst forecasts)

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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.
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