For Frontier Services Group Limited’s (SEHK:500) 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 500’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 broad market index represents a beta value of one. A stock with a beta greater than one is expected to exhibit higher volatility resulting from market-wide shocks compared to one with a beta below one.

View our latest analysis for Frontier Services Group

What is 500’s market risk?

With a five-year beta of 0.27, Frontier Services Group 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. 500’s beta indicates it is a stock that investors may find valuable if they want to reduce the overall market risk exposure of their stock portfolio.

Could 500’s size and industry cause it to be more volatile?

With a market cap of HK$2.65B, 500 falls within the small-cap spectrum of stocks, which are found to experience higher relative risk compared to larger companies. In addition to size, 500 also operates in the logistics industry, which has commonly demonstrated strong reactions to market-wide shocks. Therefore, investors may expect high beta associated with small companies, as well as those operating in the logistics industry, relative to those more well-established firms in a more defensive industry. This is an interesting conclusion, since both 500’s size and industry indicates the stock should have a higher beta than it currently has. There may be a more fundamental driver which can explain this inconsistency, which we will examine below.

How 500’s assets could affect its 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 test 500’s ratio of fixed assets to total assets in order to determine how high the risk is associated with this type of constraint. 500’s fixed assets to total assets ratio of higher than 30% shows that the company uses up a big chunk of its capital on assets that are hard to scale up or down in short notice. As a result, this aspect of 500 indicates a higher beta than a similar size company with a lower portion of fixed assets on their balance sheet. This outcome contradicts 500’s current beta value which indicates a below-average volatility.