Burn rate is a synonymous term for negative cash flow. It is a measure for how fast a company will use up its shareholder capital. If the shareholder capital is exhausted, the company will either have to start making a profit, find additional funding, or close down.
The term came into common use during the dot-com era when many start-up companies went through several stages of funding before emerging into profitability and positive cash flows and thus becoming self-sustainable (or, as for the majority, failing to find additional funding and sustainable business models and thus going bankrupt). In between funding events, burn rate becomes an important management measure, since together with the available funds, it provides a time measure to when the next funding event needs to take place.
Some claim that part of the reasons behind the dot-com bust was the unsound management and financial investor practices to keep the burn rate up, taking it as a proxy for how fast the start-up company was acquiring a customer base.
The term burn rate can also refer to how quickly individuals spend their money, particularly their discretionary income. For example, Mackenzie Investments commissioned a test to gauge the spending and saving behavior of Canadians to determine if they are “Overspenders.”
Read more about Burn Rate: In Project Management
Famous quotes containing the words burn and/or rate:
“Some burn damp faggots, others may consume
The entire combustible world in one small room
As though dried straw, and if we turn about
The bare chimney is gone black out
Because the work had finished in that flare.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“If we became students of Malcolm X, we would not have young black men out there killing each other like they’re killing each other now. Young black men would not be impregnating young black women at the rate going on now. We’d not have the drugs we have now, or the alcoholism.”
—Spike Lee (b. 1956)