If you are a shareholder in Metals Australia Ltd’s (ASX:MLS), or are thinking about investing in the company, knowing how it contributes to the risk and reward profile of your portfolio is important. MLS is exposed to market-wide risk, which arises from investing in the stock market. This risk reflects changes in economic and political factors that affects all stocks, and is measured by its beta. Different characteristics of a stock expose it to various levels of market risk, and the market as a whole represents a beta of one. Any stock with a beta of greater than one is considered more volatile than the market, and those with a beta less than one is generally less volatile.

See our latest analysis for MLS

What is MLS’s market risk?

Metals Australia has a beta of 1.22, which means that the percentage change in its stock value will be higher than the entire market in times of booms and busts. A high level of beta means investors face higher risk associated with potential gains and losses driven by market movements. Based on this beta value, MLS will help diversify your portfolio, if it currently comprises of low-beta stocks. This will be beneficial for portfolio returns, in particular, when current market sentiment is positive.

How does MLS's size and industry impact its risk?

MLS, with its market capitalisation of AUD $10.01M, is a small-cap stock, which generally have higher beta than similar companies of larger size. Furthermore, the company operates in the metals and mining industry, which has been found to have high sensitivity to market-wide shocks. Therefore, investors may expect high beta associated with small companies, as well as those operating in the metals and mining industry, relative to those more well-established firms in a more defensive industry. This is consistent with MLS’s individual beta value we discussed above. Fundamental factors can also drive the cyclicality of the stock, which we will take a look at next.

How MLS's assets could affect its beta

An asset-heavy company tends to have a higher beta because the risk associated with running fixed assets during a downturn is highly expensive. I examine MLS’s ratio of fixed assets to total assets to see whether the company is highly exposed to the risk of this type of constraint. MLS'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 MLS indicates a higher beta than a similar size company with a lower portion of fixed assets on their balance sheet. This is consistent with is current beta value which also indicates high volatility.