The Dobruška family brewery has less room for losses than it seems

A loss on a balance sheet funded mostly by its owners

Rodinný pivovar Rampušák s.r.o., a family brewery in Dobruška in eastern Bohemia, lost CZK 2.6m in 2025. Yet at the end of that year its owners funded 74.3% of its assets with their own money: equity of CZK 31.4m against total assets of CZK 42.2m. A company built like that rarely has to ask a bank for anything. It still did not cover its costs.

The figures cover the company alone, in Czech koruna, for the calendar year 2025, under Czech accounting standards. An s.r.o. is the Czech form of a private limited company.

A third number changes how the first two read. Cash at the year end was CZK 4.1m. That is more than the loss, but it is a small slice of a balance sheet worth CZK 42.2m. Measured against equity, the 2025 loss is a dent. Measured against cash, a repeat of 2025 would be felt quickly.

The new owner arrived before the accounts did

In mid-October 2026 the company registered a change of control and a new jednatel, the statutory director who signs for a Czech s.r.o. and acts as its chief executive. The annual statements for 2025 were published later the same month, after both changes.

The order tells you something about the deal, not about its terms. Whoever took control did so with the 2025 result already known inside the company. A buyer of a small brewery is rarely paying for one year of profit. They are paying for what sits behind the CZK 31.4m of equity: the brewhouse, the tanks, the building, the stock and a local brand. The loss belongs to the price conversation.

I would not read the change of control as a rescue. A company whose owners fund 74.3% of its assets is not one that lenders are pushing out of the door. What the new jednatel inherits is a business that is solidly owned and was unprofitable in its latest year.

Equity sits in tanks and buildings, the loss is paid from the till

The three numbers fit together once you look at where the equity actually is. Equity is not a pile of money. It is the owners' claim on everything the company holds, and most of what this company holds is not cash. Of total assets of CZK 42.2m, cash makes up CZK 4.1m. The rest is tied up in equipment, property, stock and amounts owed by customers. None of that pays a malt supplier or an energy bill on Friday.

A loss works on the two sides differently. In the books, the full CZK 2.6m comes off equity, unless the owners put fresh money in. In the bank account, only the part of the loss that was actually paid out leaves. Depreciation of a brewhouse bought years ago reduces profit without touching this year's cash; a wage bill or a gas invoice reduces both. The 2025 accounts do not separate the two parts, and operating cash flow, the cash the business generated from brewing and selling, is the figure that would.

That split decides how serious CZK 4.1m of cash really is. If most of the loss was depreciation, the cash balance is under little pressure and the loss is largely an accounting echo of money spent in earlier years. If most of it was cash, the brewery used up a sum comparable to a large part of its year-end balance, and the equity ratio of 74.3% says almost nothing about how long that can continue.

This is why a strong balance sheet and a weak cash position can coexist without any contradiction. High equity means the owners carry the risk, not the lenders. It does not mean the company has money to spend. A brewery that has put its owners' capital into steel and buildings is well funded and can still be short of cash in the same month.

I would watch the cash line, not the equity ratio. The ratio will drift down slowly with each loss-making year and look reassuring for a long time. Cash moves faster and tells the truth sooner.

What to check in your own company

If your company made a loss last year, two numbers deserve a place next to each other on one page, and most management reports show only one of them.

First, work out your equity ratio: equity divided by total assets, both from the same balance sheet date. It tells you who carries the risk of the business. Then set last year's net loss next to your year-end cash, not next to your equity. That comparison tells you how much a repeat year would hurt in the place where it hurts first.

Second, ask your finance team for operating cash flow for the same year and put it next to net profit. Many smaller Czech companies do not have to prepare a cash flow statement, so you may need to ask for one specifically. If profit is negative and operating cash flow is positive, the loss is mostly depreciation and other costs that did not leave the bank account. If both are negative, divide your cash balance by the average monthly cash outflow from operations. That is your runway in months, and it is usually shorter than the equity ratio suggests.

Third, look at where your equity is invested. Go through the asset side of the balance sheet and mark what could be turned into cash within a quarter without selling the business: receivables, some stock, perhaps a vehicle. Everything else is capital you own but cannot spend. The gap between that short list and your total equity is the gap between being well funded and being liquid.

Rampušák enters new ownership with a red income statement, a balance sheet the owners largely pay for and a cash balance that is the smallest of its three cushions. The equity makes the 2025 loss look small; the cash shows its real size.