Homology Medicines (NASDAQ:FIXX) Is In A Good Position To Deliver On Growth Plans

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. But the harsh reality is that very many loss making companies burn through all their cash and go bankrupt.

So should Homology Medicines (NASDAQ:FIXX) shareholders be worried about its cash burn? In this report, we will consider the company's annual negative free cash flow, henceforth referring to it as the 'cash burn'. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.

See our latest analysis for Homology Medicines

Does Homology Medicines Have A Long Cash Runway?

A company's cash runway is calculated by dividing its cash hoard by its cash burn. As at December 2020, Homology Medicines had cash of US$217m and no debt. Looking at the last year, the company burnt through US$98m. So it had a cash runway of about 2.2 years from December 2020. That's decent, giving the company a couple years to develop its business. You can see how its cash balance has changed over time in the image below.

How Well Is Homology Medicines Growing?

On balance, we think it's mildly positive that Homology Medicines trimmed its cash burn by 13% over the last twelve months. Having said that, the revenue growth of 62% was considerably more inspiring. It seems to be growing nicely. Clearly, however, the crucial factor is whether the company will grow its business going forward. For that reason, it makes a lot of sense to take a look at our analyst forecasts for the company.

How Hard Would It Be For Homology Medicines To Raise More Cash For Growth?

While Homology Medicines seems to be in a decent position, we reckon it is still worth thinking about how easily it could raise more cash, if that proved desirable. 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.

Since it has a market capitalisation of US$313m, Homology Medicines' US$98m in cash burn equates to about 31% of its market value. That's fairly notable cash burn, so if the company had to sell shares to cover the cost of another year's operations, shareholders would suffer some costly dilution.

Is Homology Medicines' Cash Burn A Worry?

Even though its cash burn relative to its market cap makes us a little nervous, we are compelled to mention that we thought Homology Medicines' revenue growth was relatively promising. Cash burning companies are always on the riskier side of things, but after considering all of the factors discussed in this short piece, we're not too worried about its rate of cash burn. Separately, we looked at different risks affecting the company and spotted 5 warning signs for Homology Medicines (of which 1 doesn't sit too well with us!) 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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