Does Bilfinger SE (FRA:GBF) Go Up With The Market?
If you are a shareholder in Bilfinger SE’s (DB:GBF), or are thinking about investing in the company, knowing how it contributes to the risk and reward profile of your portfolio is important. Every stock in the market is exposed to market risk, which arises from macroeconomic factors such as economic growth and geo-political tussles just to name a few. This 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 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.
See our latest analysis for Bilfinger
What is GBF’s market risk?
With a beta of 1.07, Bilfinger 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, GBF 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.
Does GBF’s size and industry impact the expected beta?
GBF has a market capitalization of €1.79B, putting it in the category of established companies, which are found to experience less relative risk compared to small-sized companies. But, GBF’s industry, commercial services, is considered to be cyclical, which means it is more volatile than the market over the economic cycle. Therefore, investors can expect a low beta associated with the size of GBF, but a higher beta given the nature of the industry it operates in. It seems as though there is an inconsistency in risks from GBF’s size and industry. A potential driver of this variance can be a fundamental factor, which we will take a look at next.
Can GBF’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 GBF’s ratio of fixed assets to total assets to see whether the company is highly exposed to the risk of this type of constraint. Since GBF’s fixed assets are only 12.55% of its total assets, it doesn’t depend heavily on a high level of these rigid and costly assets to operate its business. 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 GBF’s actual beta value suggests, which is higher stock volatility relative to the market.
What this means for you:
You could benefit from higher returns during times of economic growth by holding onto GBF. Its low fixed cost also means that, in terms of operating leverage, it is relatively flexible during times of economic downturns. In order to fully understand whether GBF is a good investment for you, we also need to consider important company-specific fundamentals such as Bilfinger’s financial health and performance track record. I urge you to complete your research by taking a look at the following:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for GBF’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for GBF’s outlook.
Past Track Record: Has GBF 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 GBF’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.
