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There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. For example, biotech and mining exploration companies often lose money for years before finding success with a new treatment or mineral discovery. But while history lauds those rare successes, those that fail are often forgotten; who remembers Pets.com?
So should Blueprint Medicines ( NASDAQ:BPMC ) shareholders be worried about its cash burn? For the purposes of this article, cash burn is the annual rate at which an unprofitable company spends cash to fund its growth; its negative free cash flow. Let's start with an examination of the business' cash, relative to its cash burn.
Check out our latest analysis for Blueprint Medicines
When Might Blueprint Medicines Run Out Of Money?
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 June 2020, Blueprint Medicines had US$522m in cash, and was debt-free. In the last year, its cash burn was US$340m. So it had a cash runway of approximately 18 months from June 2020. Notably, however, analysts think that Blueprint Medicines will break even (at a free cash flow level) before then. In that case, it may never reach the end of its cash runway. Depicted below, you can see how its cash holdings have changed over time.
How Well Is Blueprint Medicines Growing?
At first glance it's a bit worrying to see that Blueprint Medicines actually boosted its cash burn by 17%, year on year. Given that it boosted operating revenue by a stand-out 844% in the same period, we think management are simply more focussed on growth than preserving cash. Sometimes you need to spend money to make money! It seems to be growing nicely. While the past is always worth studying, it is the future that matters most of all. So you might want to take a peek at how much the company is expected to grow in the next few years .
Can Blueprint Medicines Raise More Cash Easily?
Even though it seems like Blueprint Medicines is developing its business nicely, we still like to consider how easily it could raise more money to accelerate growth. 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 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).
Blueprint Medicines' cash burn of US$340m is about 8.4% of its US$4.0b market capitalisation. Given that is a rather small percentage, it would probably be really easy for the company to fund another year's growth by issuing some new shares to investors, or even by taking out a loan.