We're Not Very Worried About GigaMedia's (NASDAQ:GIGM) Cash Burn Rate

Even when a business is losing money, it's possible for shareholders to make money if they buy a good business at the right price. For example, biotech and mining exploration companies often lose money for years before finding success with a new treatment or mineral discovery. Nonetheless, only a fool would ignore the risk that a loss making company burns through its cash too quickly.

Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether GigaMedia (NASDAQ:GIGM) shareholders should be worried about its 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. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.

View our latest analysis for GigaMedia

Does GigaMedia Have A Long Cash Runway?

A company's cash runway is calculated by dividing its cash hoard by its cash burn. GigaMedia has such a small amount of debt that we'll set it aside, and focus on the US$44m in cash it held at March 2021. Looking at the last year, the company burnt through US$2.1m. That means it had a cash runway of very many years as of March 2021. Even though this is but one measure of the company's cash burn, the thought of such a long cash runway warms our bellies in a comforting way. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.

How Well Is GigaMedia Growing?

At first glance it's a bit worrying to see that GigaMedia actually boosted its cash burn by 21%, year on year. To be fair, given that fact it's hardly inspiring to see that the operating revenue was flat year on year. In light of the data above, we're fairly sanguine about the business growth trajectory. In reality, this article only makes a short study of the company's growth data. You can take a look at how GigaMedia has developed its business over time by checking this visualization of its revenue and earnings history.

Can GigaMedia Raise More Cash Easily?

Even though it seems like GigaMedia is developing its business nicely, we still like to consider how easily it could raise more money to accelerate 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. 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.

GigaMedia's cash burn of US$2.1m is about 6.5% of its US$32m 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.

How Risky Is GigaMedia's Cash Burn Situation?

It may already be apparent to you that we're relatively comfortable with the way GigaMedia 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. While its increasing cash burn wasn't great, the other factors mentioned in this article more than make up for weakness on that measure. Based on the factors mentioned in this article, we think its cash burn situation warrants some attention from shareholders, but we don't think they should be worried. Readers need to have a sound understanding of business risks before investing in a stock, and we've spotted 2 warning signs for GigaMedia that potential shareholders should take into account before putting money into a stock.

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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