With the business potentially at an important milestone, we thought we'd take a closer look at Hastings Technology Metals Limited's (ASX:HAS) future prospects. Hastings Technology Metals Limited engages in the exploration and development of rare earth deposits in Australia. The AU$47m market-cap company posted a loss in its most recent financial year of AU$11m and a latest trailing-twelve-month loss of AU$15m leading to an even wider gap between loss and breakeven. Many investors are wondering about the rate at which Hastings Technology Metals will turn a profit, with the big question being “when will the company breakeven?” We've put together a brief outline of industry analyst expectations for the company, its year of breakeven and its implied growth rate.

View our latest analysis for Hastings Technology Metals

According to the 2 industry analysts covering Hastings Technology Metals, the consensus is that breakeven is near. They anticipate the company to incur a final loss in 2025, before generating positive profits of AU$26m in 2026. Therefore, the company is expected to breakeven roughly 2 years from today. What rate will the company have to grow year-on-year in order to breakeven on this date? Using a line of best fit, we calculated an average annual growth rate of 17%, which seems realistic. Should the business grow at a slower rate, it will become profitable at a later date than expected.

Given this is a high-level overview, we won’t go into details of Hastings Technology Metals' upcoming projects, though, take into account that generally a metal and mining business has lumpy cash flows which are contingent on the natural resource mined and stage at which the company is operating. So, a double-digit growth rate is not out of the ordinary, particularly when a company is in a period of investment.

One thing we would like to bring into light with Hastings Technology Metals is its relatively high level of debt. Typically, debt shouldn’t exceed 40% of your equity, which in Hastings Technology Metals' case is 51%. Note that a higher debt obligation increases the risk around investing in the loss-making company.

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There are key fundamentals of Hastings Technology Metals which are not covered in this article, but we must stress again that this is merely a basic overview. For a more comprehensive look at Hastings Technology Metals, take a look at Hastings Technology Metals' company page on Simply Wall St. We've also compiled a list of essential factors you should further research: