How Should You Think About Goldquest Mining Corp's (CVE:GQC) Risks?

If you are a shareholder in Goldquest Mining Corp’s (TSXV:GQC), or are thinking about investing in the company, knowing how it contributes to the risk and reward profile of your portfolio is important. Broadly speaking, there are two types of risk you should consider when investing in stocks such as GQC. The first risk to consider is company-specific, which can be diversified away when you invest in other companies in the same industry as GQC, because it is rare that an entire industry collapses at once. The second risk is market-wide, which arises from investing in the stock market. This risk reflects changes in economic and political factors that affects all stocks.

Not every stock is exposed to the same level of market risk. A widely-used metric to measure a stock's market risk is beta, and the broad market index 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.

What is GQC’s market risk?

With a beta of 3.41, Goldquest Mining is a stock that tends to experience more gains than the market during a growth phase and also a bigger reduction in value compared to the market during a broad downturn. According to this value of beta, GQC 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 GQC's size and industry impact its risk?

A market capitalisation of CA$96.66M puts GQC in the category of small-cap stocks, which tends to possess higher beta than larger companies. 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 supports our interpretation of GQC’s beta value discussed above. Next, we will examine the fundamental factors which can cause cyclicality in the stock.

How GQC'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 test GQC’s ratio of fixed assets to total assets in order to determine how high the risk is associated with this type of constraint. Considering fixed assets account for less than a third of the company's overall assets, GQC seems to have a smaller dependency on fixed costs to generate revenue. Thus, we can expect GQC 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. However, this is the opposite to what GQC’s actual beta value suggests, which is higher stock volatility relative to the market.

What this means for you:

You may reap the gains of GQC's returns during times of economic growth by holding the stock. Its low fixed cost also implies that it has the flexibility to adjust its cost to preserve margins during times of a downturn. I recommend analysing the stock in terms of your current portfolio composition before deciding to invest more into GQC. What I have not mentioned in my article here are important company-specific fundamentals such as Goldquest Mining’s financial health and performance track record. I urge you to complete your research by taking a look at the following:

• 1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for GQC’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for GQC’s outlook.
• 2. Past Track Record: Has GQC 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 GQC's historicals for more clarity.
• 3. 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.

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Simply Wall St analyst Simply Wall St and Simply Wall St have no position in any of the companies mentioned. This article is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.