Companies Like Anavex Life Sciences (NASDAQ:AVXL) Can Afford To Invest In Growth

Just because a business does not make any money, does not mean that the stock will go down. 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.

Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether Anavex Life Sciences (NASDAQ:AVXL) 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 Anavex Life Sciences

How Long Is Anavex Life Sciences' Cash Runway?

A company's cash runway is calculated by dividing its cash hoard by its cash burn. In September 2022, Anavex Life Sciences had US$149m in cash, and was debt-free. In the last year, its cash burn was US$24m. That means it had a cash runway of about 6.2 years as of September 2022. Notably, however, analysts think that Anavex Life Sciences will break even (at a free cash flow level) before then. If that happens, then the length of its cash runway, today, would become a moot point. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.

How Is Anavex Life Sciences' Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

Because Anavex Life Sciences 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. While it hardly paints a picture of imminent growth, the fact that it has reduced its cash burn by 20% over the last year suggests some degree of prudence. While the past is always worth studying, it is the future that matters most of all. So you might want to take a peek at how much the company is expected to grow in the next few years.

How Easily Can Anavex Life Sciences Raise Cash?

Even though it has reduced its cash burn recently, shareholders should still consider how easy it would be for Anavex Life Sciences to raise more cash in the future. Generally speaking, a listed business can raise new cash through issuing shares or taking on debt. Many companies end up issuing new shares to fund future 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 US$825m, Anavex Life Sciences' US$24m in cash burn equates to about 2.9% of its market value. 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.

Is Anavex Life Sciences' Cash Burn A Worry?

As you can probably tell by now, we're not too worried about Anavex Life Sciences' cash burn. In particular, we think its cash runway stands out as evidence that the company is well on top of its spending. Its weak point is its cash burn reduction, but even that wasn't too bad! One real positive is that analysts are forecasting that the company will reach breakeven. After considering a range of factors in this article, we're pretty relaxed about its cash burn, since the company seems to be in a good position to continue to fund its growth. Separately, we looked at different risks affecting the company and spotted 3 warning signs for Anavex Life Sciences (of which 2 are significant!) you should know about.

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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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.