We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. 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. Having said that, unprofitable companies are risky because they could potentially burn through all their cash and become distressed.

So should Red Metal (ASX:RDM) 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. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.

See our latest analysis for Red Metal

Does Red Metal Have A Long Cash Runway?

A company's cash runway is the amount of time it would take to burn through its cash reserves at its current cash burn rate. In December 2020, Red Metal had AU$3.5m in cash, and was debt-free. In the last year, its cash burn was AU$783k. That means it had a cash runway of about 4.5 years as of December 2020. 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 Well Is Red Metal Growing?

It was fairly positive to see that Red Metal reduced its cash burn by 28% during the last year. But the operating revenue growth of 204% was even better. We think it is growing rather well, upon reflection. In reality, this article only makes a short study of the company's growth data. You can take a look at how Red Metal is growing revenue over time by checking this visualization of past revenue growth.

Can Red Metal Raise More Cash Easily?

We are certainly impressed with the progress Red Metal has made over the last year, but it is also worth considering how costly it would be if it wanted to raise more cash to fund faster growth. Companies can raise capital through either debt or equity. One of the main advantages held by publicly listed companies is that they can sell shares to investors to raise cash and fund growth. By comparing a company's annual cash burn to its total market capitalisation, we can estimate roughly how many shares it would have to issue in order to run the company for another year (at the same burn rate).

Since it has a market capitalisation of AU$34m, Red Metal's AU$783k in cash burn equates to about 2.3% of its market value. That means it could easily issue a few shares to fund more growth, and might well be in a position to borrow cheaply.

So, Should We Worry About Red Metal's Cash Burn?

As you can probably tell by now, we're not too worried about Red Metal's cash burn. In particular, we think its revenue growth stands out as evidence that the company is well on top of its spending. And even though its cash burn reduction wasn't quite as impressive, it was still a positive. After taking into account the various metrics mentioned in this report, we're pretty comfortable with how the company is spending its cash. Its important for readers to be cognizant of the risks that can affect the company's operations, and we've picked out 3 warning signs for Red Metal that investors should know when investing in the stock.

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)

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. 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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