We’re Keeping An Eye On Cocrystal Pharma’s (NASDAQ:COCP) Cash Burn Rate

There’s no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. For example, although Amazon.com made losses for many years after listing, if you had bought and held the shares since 1999, you would have made a fortune. But while history lauds those rare successes, those that fail are often forgotten; who remembers Pets.com?

Given this risk, we thought we’d take a look at whether Cocrystal Pharma (NASDAQ:COCP) shareholders should 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’.

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When Might Cocrystal Pharma Run Out Of Money?

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. In December 2025, Cocrystal Pharma had US$7.0m in cash, and was debt-free. Importantly, its cash burn was US$8.2m over the trailing twelve months. Therefore, from December 2025 it had roughly 10 months of cash runway. To be frank, this kind of short runway puts us on edge, as it indicates the company must reduce its cash burn significantly, or else raise cash imminently. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years.

Check out our latest analysis for Cocrystal Pharma

How Is Cocrystal Pharma’s Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

Cocrystal Pharma didn’t record any revenue over the last year, indicating that it’s an early stage company still developing its business. So while we can’t look to sales to understand growth, we can look at how the cash burn is changing to understand how expenditure is trending over time. As it happens, the company’s cash burn reduced by 50% over the last year, which suggests that management are mindful of the possibility of running out of cash. While the past is always worth studying, it is the future that matters most of all. For that reason, it makes a lot of sense to take a look at our analyst forecasts for the company.

How Easily Can Cocrystal Pharma Raise Cash?

There’s no doubt Cocrystal Pharma’s rapidly reducing cash burn brings comfort, but even if it’s only hypothetical, it’s always worth asking how easily it could raise more money to fund further 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. 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.

Since it has a market capitalisation of US$21m, Cocrystal Pharma’s US$8.2m in cash burn equates to about 39% of its market value. 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.

How Risky Is Cocrystal Pharma’s Cash Burn Situation?

Even though its cash burn relative to its market cap makes us a little nervous, we are compelled to mention that we thought Cocrystal Pharma’s cash burn reduction was relatively promising. Looking at the factors mentioned in this short report, we do think that its cash burn is a bit risky, and it does make us slightly nervous about the stock. On another note, Cocrystal Pharma has 7 warning signs (and 4 which can’t be ignored) we think you should know about.

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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.