How Should You Think About Argex Titanium Inc’s (TSE:RGX) Risks?

If you are a shareholder in Argex Titanium Inc’s (TSX:RGX), or are thinking about investing in the company, knowing how it contributes to the risk and reward profile of your portfolio is important. RGX 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. Not all stocks are expose to the same level of market risk, and the market as a whole represents a beta 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.

Check out our latest analysis for Argex Titanium

What is RGX’s market risk?

Argex Titanium has a beta of 3.43, 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. According to this value of beta, RGX 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.

Does RGX’s size and industry impact the expected beta?

RGX, with its market capitalisation of CAD CA$12.56M, is a small-cap stock, which generally have higher beta than similar companies of larger size. Moreover, RGX’s industry, metals and mining, is considered to be cyclical, which means it is more volatile than the market over the economic cycle. 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 RGX’s individual beta value we discussed above. Next, we will examine the fundamental factors which can cause cyclicality in the stock.

TSX:RGX Income Statement Jan 6th 18
TSX:RGX Income Statement Jan 6th 18

How RGX’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 RGX’s ratio of fixed assets to total assets in order to determine how high the risk is associated with this type of constraint. Given a fixed to total assets ratio of over 30%, RGX seems to be a company which invests a big chunk of its capital on assets that cannot be scaled down on short-notice. As a result, this aspect of RGX 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.

What this means for you:

Are you a shareholder? You may reap the gains of RGX’s returns in times of an economic boom. Though the business does have higher fixed cost than what is considered safe, during times of growth, consumer demand may be high enough to not warrant immediate concerns. However, during a downturn, a more defensive stock can cushion the impact of this risk. For next steps, take a look at RGX’s outlook to see what analysts are expecting for the stock on our free analysis plaform here.

Are you a potential investor? I recommend that you look into RGX’s fundamental factors such as its current valuation and financial health as well. Take into account your portfolio sensitivity to the market before you invest in the stock, as well as where we are in the current economic cycle. RGX may be a great investment during times of economic growth. You can examine these factors in our free fundamental research report for RGX 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.

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