RE: What is the monthly cash but position?11 Nov 2020 09:51
Found this in the MTF website:
Cash burn
The company’s operating loss for the six months to 31 March has dropped, from £3.87m in the same period last year, to £1.56m. But while that might look good, it’s apparently all down to “lower depletion and impairment charges.” Administrative expenses rose from £0.93m to £1.56m.
What seems more significant to me is that net cash outflow from operations climbed from £1.76m last year to £3.45m. And though costs of exploration and asset evaluation dropped from £4.95m, the latest £3.31m outflow was still a significant chunk of cash — for a company that has precious little of the stuff and isn’t making any profits.
Overall cash outflows totalled £5.15m, down from £6.79m, leaving cash and equivalents of £7.2m on the books at 31 March (up from £4.5m in 2018).
Dilution
The obvious question is how is all this cash burn being funded? And the equally clear answer is through new share placings, the most recent of which raised £3.5m (which came after the period end and isn’t included in these half-year figures).
The problem that raises for existing shareholders is dilution. Whatever profits the firm might or might not eventually make from its assets at Horse Hill, that’s being spread across more and more shareholders, leaving less and less for each. When that continues year in, year out, it tends to lead to a share price collapse — which is precisely what we see.