Here's Why We're Watching Cloudbreak Pharma's (HKG:2592) Cash Burn Situation
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, although software-as-a-service business Salesforce.com lost money for years while it grew recurring revenue, if you held shares since 2005, you'd have done very well indeed. Nonetheless, only a fool would ignore the risk that a loss making company burns through its cash too quickly.
So should Cloudbreak Pharma (HKG:2592) shareholders 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). The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.
How Long Is Cloudbreak Pharma's 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. Cloudbreak Pharma has such a small amount of debt that we'll set it aside, and focus on the US$58m in cash it held at December 2025. Looking at the last year, the company burnt through US$52m. So it had a cash runway of approximately 14 months from December 2025. That's not too bad, but it's fair to say the end of the cash runway is in sight, unless cash burn reduces drastically. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.
See our latest analysis for Cloudbreak Pharma
How Is Cloudbreak Pharma's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?
While Cloudbreak Pharma did record statutory revenue of US$253k over the last year, it didn't have any revenue from operations. That means we consider it a pre-revenue business, and we will focus our growth analysis on cash burn, for now. Over the last year its cash burn actually increased by a very significant 94%. While this spending increase is no doubt intended to drive growth, if the trend continues the company's cash runway will shrink very quickly. Cloudbreak Pharma makes us a little nervous due to its lack of substantial operating revenue. So we'd generally prefer stocks from this list of stocks that have analysts forecasting growth.
How Easily Can Cloudbreak Pharma Raise Cash?
Given its cash burn trajectory, Cloudbreak Pharma shareholders may wish to consider how easily it could raise more cash, despite its solid cash runway. Issuing new shares, or taking on debt, are the most common ways for a listed company to raise more money for its business. 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.
Cloudbreak Pharma's cash burn of US$52m is about 36% of its US$144m market capitalisation. 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 Cloudbreak Pharma's Cash Burn A Worry?
Even though its increasing cash burn makes us a little nervous, we are compelled to mention that we thought Cloudbreak Pharma's cash runway was relatively promising. Summing up, we think the Cloudbreak Pharma's cash burn is a risk, based on the factors we mentioned in this article. Taking a deeper dive, we've spotted 4 warning signs for Cloudbreak Pharma you should be aware of, and 3 of them are concerning.
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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.