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. By way of example, InspireMD (NASDAQ:NSPR) has seen its share price rise 170% over the last year, delighting many shareholders. 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 InspireMD'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. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.

See our latest analysis for InspireMD

When Might InspireMD Run Out Of Money?

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 2023, InspireMD had US$43m in cash, and was debt-free. In the last year, its cash burn was US$16m. So it had a cash runway of about 2.7 years from September 2023. Arguably, that's a prudent and sensible length of runway to have. You can see how its cash balance has changed over time in the image below.

How Well Is InspireMD Growing?

In the last twelve months, InspireMD kept its cash burn steady. Similarly, operating revenue remained fairly constant, which is hardly inspiring. In light of the data above, we're fairly sanguine about the business growth trajectory. 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 InspireMD Raise More Cash Easily?

While InspireMD seems to be in a fairly good position, 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. 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).

InspireMD has a market capitalisation of US$66m and burnt through US$16m last year, which is 24% of the company's market value. That's not insignificant, and if the company had to sell enough shares to fund another year's growth at the current share price, you'd likely witness fairly costly dilution.