Yahoo Finance How Should You Think About Sapling Spólka Akcyjna’s (WSE:SAP) Risks?
For Sapling Spólka Akcyjna’s (WSE:SAP) shareholders, and also potential investors in the stock, understanding how the stock’s risk and return characteristics can impact your portfolio is important. The beta measures SAP’s exposure to the wider market risk, which reflects changes in economic and political factors. Not all stocks are expose to the same level of market risk, and the market as a whole represents a beta value of one. A stock with a beta greater than one is considered more sensitive to market-wide shocks compared to a stock that trades below the value of one.
View our latest analysis for Sapling Spólka Akcyjna
What is SAP’s market risk?
With a five-year beta of 0.12, Sapling Spólka Akcyjna appears to be a less volatile company compared to the rest of the market. This means the stock is more defensive against the ups and downs of a stock market, moving by less than the entire market index in times of change. SAP’s beta implies it may be a stock that investors with high-beta portfolios might find relevant if they wanted to reduce their exposure to market risk, especially during times of downturns.
How does SAP’s size and industry impact its risk?
A market capitalisation of ZŁ1.22M puts SAP in the category of small-cap stocks, which tends to possess higher beta than larger companies. Furthermore, the company operates in the machinery industry, which has been found to have high sensitivity to market-wide shocks. As a result, we should expect a high beta for the small-cap SAP but a low beta for the machinery industry. It seems as though there is an inconsistency in risks portrayed by SAP’s size and industry relative to its actual beta value. There may be a more fundamental driver which can explain this inconsistency, which we will examine below.
Can SAP’s asset-composition point to a higher beta?
During times of economic downturn, low demand may cause companies to readjust production of their goods and services. It is more difficult for companies to lower their cost, if the majority of these costs are generated by fixed assets. Therefore, this is a type of risk which is associated with higher beta. I examine SAP’s ratio of fixed assets to total assets to see whether the company is highly exposed to the risk of this type of constraint. Given that fixed assets make up an insignificant portion of total assets, SAP doesn’t rely heavily upon these expensive, inflexible assets to run its business during downturns. Thus, we can expect SAP to be more stable in the face of market movements, relative to its peers of similar size but with a higher portion of fixed assets on their books. Similarly, SAP’s beta value conveys the same message.
What this means for you:
You may reap the benefit of muted movements during times of economic decline by holding onto SAP. Its low fixed cost also means that, in terms of operating leverage, its costs are relatively malleable to preserve margins. In order to fully understand whether SAP is a good investment for you, we also need to consider important company-specific fundamentals such as Sapling Spólka Akcyjna’s financial health and performance track record. I urge you to complete your research by taking a look at the following:
Financial Health: Is SAP’s operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why we’ve done it for you. Check out our financial health checks here.
Past Track Record: Has SAP been consistently performing well irrespective of the ups and downs in the market? Go into more detail in the past performance analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of SAP’s historicals for more clarity.
Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.
To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.
