How Should You Think About Two Shields Investments Plc’s (LON:TSI) Risks?

If you are looking to invest in Two Shields Investments Plc’s (AIM:TSI), or currently own the stock, then you need to understand its beta in order to understand how it can affect the risk of your portfolio. There are two types of risks that affect the market value of a listed company such as TSI. The first type is company-specific risk, which can be diversified away by investing in other companies to reduce exposure to one particular stock. The other type of risk, which cannot be diversified away, is market risk. Every stock in the market is exposed to this risk, which arises from macroeconomic factors such as economic growth and geo-political tussles just to name a few.

Different characteristics of a stock expose it to various levels 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 does TSI’s beta value mean?

Two Shields Investments has a beta of 1.62, 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, TSI can help magnify your portfolio return, especially if it is predominantly made up of low-beta stocks. If the market is going up, a higher exposure to the upside from a high-beta stock can push up your portfolio return.

How does TSI’s size and industry impact its risk?

TSI, with its market capitalisation of UK£4.59M, is a small-cap stock, which generally have higher beta than similar companies of larger size. Moreover, TSI’s industry, metals and mining, is considered to be cyclical, which means it is more volatile than the market over the economic cycle. As a result, we should expect higher beta for small-cap stocks in a cyclical industry compared to larger stocks in a defensive industry. This is consistent with TSI’s individual beta value we discussed above.

Can TSI’s asset-composition point to a higher 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 TSI’s ratio of fixed assets to total assets in order to determine how high the risk is associated with this type of constraint. Given that fixed assets make up an insignificant portion of total assets, TSI doesn’t rely heavily upon these expensive, inflexible assets to run its business during downturns. As a result, the company may be less volatile relative to broad market movements, compared to a company of similar size but higher proportion of fixed assets. However, this is the opposite to what TSI’s actual beta value suggests, which is higher stock volatility relative to the market.

What this means for you:

You could reap the gains of TSI’s returns in times of an economic boom. However, during a downturn, a more defensive stock can cushion the impact of this risk. Depending on the composition of your portfolio, high-beta stocks such as TSI is valuable to pump up your returns, in particular, during times of economic growth. In order to fully understand whether TSI is a good investment for you, we also need to consider important company-specific fundamentals such as Two Shields Investments’s financial health and performance track record. I highly recommend you to complete your research by taking a look at the following:

1. Financial Health: Is TSI’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.
2. Past Track Record: Has TSI 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 TSI’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.