We can readily understand why investors are attracted to unprofitable companies. 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. But while history lauds those rare successes, those that fail are often forgotten; who remembers Pets.com?
So should MediWound (NASDAQ:MDWD) shareholders be worried about its cash burn? 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. First, we’ll determine its cash runway by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves.
A company’s cash runway is the amount of time it would take to burn through its cash reserves at its current cash burn rate. When MediWound last reported its September 2025 balance sheet in November 2025, it had zero debt and cash worth US$59m. In the last year, its cash burn was US$19m. That means it had a cash runway of about 3.2 years as of September 2025. There’s no doubt that this is a reassuringly long runway. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.
View our latest analysis for MediWound
On balance, we think it’s mildly positive that MediWound trimmed its cash burn by 17% over the last twelve months. And operating revenue was up by 6.1% too. Considering the factors above, the company doesn’t fare badly when it comes to assessing how it is changing over time. 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.
We are certainly impressed with the progress MediWound has made over the last year, but it is also worth considering how costly it would be if it wanted to raise more cash to fund faster growth. 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. By looking at a company’s cash burn relative to its market capitalisation, we gain insight on how much shareholders would be diluted if the company needed to raise enough cash to cover another year’s cash burn.
