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Why You Need To Look At This Factor Before Buying Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp (SHIP)

For Seanergy Maritime Holdings Corp’s (NASDAQ:SHIP) shareholders, and also potential investors in the stock, understanding how the stock’s risk and return characteristics can impact 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 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.

See our latest analysis for SHIP

An interpretation of SHIP's beta

With a beta of 1.62, Seanergy Maritime Holdings 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. Based on this beta value, SHIP 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.

Could SHIP's size and industry cause it to be more volatile?

A market capitalisation of USD $41.42M puts SHIP in the category of small-cap stocks, which tends to possess higher beta than larger companies. Moreover, SHIP’s industry, marine, 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 SHIP’s individual beta value we discussed above. Next, we will examine the fundamental factors which can cause cyclicality in the stock.

NasdaqCM:SHIP Income Statement Oct 1st 17
NasdaqCM:SHIP Income Statement Oct 1st 17

How SHIP's assets could affect its 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 test SHIP’s ratio of fixed assets to total assets in order to determine how high the risk is associated with this type of constraint. SHIP'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 SHIP 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 could benefit from higher returns from SHIP during times of economic growth. Its higher fixed cost isn’t a major concern given margins are covered with high consumer demand. However, in times of a downturn, it may be safe to look at a more defensive stock which can cushion the impact of lower demand.

Are you a potential investor? I recommend that you look into SHIP'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. SHIP may be a great investment during times of economic growth.

Beta is one aspect of your portfolio construction to consider when holding or entering into a stock. But it is certainly not the only factor. Take a look at our most recent infographic report on Seanergy Maritime Holdings for a more in-depth analysis of the stock to help you make a well-informed investment decision. But if you are not interested in Seanergy Maritime Holdings anymore, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.


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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