We Think Verve Therapeutics (NASDAQ:VERV) Can Afford To Drive Business Growth

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. Having said that, unprofitable companies are risky because they could potentially burn through all their cash and become distressed.

Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether Verve Therapeutics (NASDAQ:VERV) shareholders should 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. We'll start by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves in order to calculate its cash runway.

Check out our latest analysis for Verve Therapeutics

How Long Is Verve Therapeutics' Cash Runway?

A cash runway is defined as the length of time it would take a company to run out of money if it kept spending at its current rate of cash burn. In September 2022, Verve Therapeutics had US$551m in cash, and was debt-free. In the last year, its cash burn was US$127m. That means it had a cash runway of about 4.3 years as of September 2022. There's no doubt that this is a reassuringly long runway. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.

How Is Verve Therapeutics' Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

In our view, Verve Therapeutics doesn't yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just US$929k in the last twelve months. Therefore, for the purposes of this analysis we'll focus on how the cash burn is tracking. During the last twelve months, its cash burn actually ramped up 83%. While this spending increase is no doubt intended to drive growth, if the trend continues the company's cash runway will shrink very quickly. Clearly, however, the crucial factor is whether the company will grow its business going forward. So you might want to take a peek at how much the company is expected to grow in the next few years.

How Hard Would It Be For Verve Therapeutics To Raise More Cash For Growth?

While Verve Therapeutics does have a solid cash runway, its cash burn trajectory may have some shareholders thinking ahead to when the company may need to raise more cash. Issuing new shares, or taking on debt, are the most common ways for a listed company to raise more money for its business. Many companies end up issuing new shares to fund future 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.

Since it has a market capitalisation of US$1.3b, Verve Therapeutics' US$127m in cash burn equates to about 10.0% of its market value. That's a low proportion, so we figure the company would be able to raise more cash to fund growth, with a little dilution, or even to simply borrow some money.

So, Should We Worry About Verve Therapeutics' Cash Burn?

As you can probably tell by now, we're not too worried about Verve Therapeutics' cash burn. In particular, we think its cash runway stands out as evidence that the company is well on top of its spending. While we must concede that its increasing cash burn is a bit worrying, the other factors mentioned in this article provide great comfort when it comes to the cash burn. 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. On another note, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the company, and identified 5 warning signs for Verve Therapeutics (2 don't sit too well with us!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

Of course Verve Therapeutics 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.