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, WhiteHawk (ASX:WHK) shareholders have done very well over the last year, with the share price soaring by 114%. Having said that, unprofitable companies are risky because they could potentially burn through all their cash and become distressed.

In light of its strong share price run, we think now is a good time to investigate how risky WhiteHawk's cash burn is. 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. Let's start with an examination of the business' cash, relative to its cash burn.

Check out our latest analysis for WhiteHawk

How Long Is WhiteHawk's Cash Runway?

You can calculate a company's cash runway by dividing the amount of cash it has by the rate at which it is spending that cash. In December 2020, WhiteHawk had US$3.5m in cash, and was debt-free. Importantly, its cash burn was US$1.1m over the trailing twelve months. So it had a cash runway of about 3.1 years from December 2020. A runway of this length affords the company the time and space it needs to develop the business. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.

How Is WhiteHawk's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

In our view, WhiteHawk doesn't yet produce significant amounts of operating revenue, since it reported just US$1.9m in the last twelve months. As a result, we think it's a bit early to focus on the revenue growth, so we'll limit ourselves to looking at how the cash burn is changing over time. Even though it doesn't get us excited, the 42% reduction in cash burn year on year does suggest the company can continue operating for quite some time. In reality, this article only makes a short study of the company's growth data. You can take a look at how WhiteHawk is growing revenue over time by checking this visualization of past revenue growth.

How Easily Can WhiteHawk Raise Cash?

While WhiteHawk is showing a solid reduction in its cash burn, it's still worth considering how easily it could raise more cash, even just to fuel faster growth. 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.

WhiteHawk has a market capitalisation of US$30m and burnt through US$1.1m last year, which is 3.7% of the company's 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.

Is WhiteHawk's Cash Burn A Worry?

It may already be apparent to you that we're relatively comfortable with the way WhiteHawk is burning through its cash. For example, we think its cash runway suggests that the company is on a good path. Its cash burn reduction wasn't quite as good, but was still rather encouraging! Looking at all the measures in this article, together, we're not worried about its rate of cash burn, which seems to be under control. On another note, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the company, and identified 5 warning signs for WhiteHawk (1 doesn't sit too well with us!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

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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