For Houston American Energy Corp’s (AMEX:HUSA) shareholders, and also potential investors in the stock, understanding how the stock’s risk and return characteristics can impact your portfolio is important. HUSA 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 every stock is exposed to the same level of market risk, and the broad market index represents a beta value of one. A stock with a beta greater than one is expected to exhibit higher volatility resulting from market-wide shocks compared to one with a beta below one.

Check out our latest analysis for Houston American Energy

What does HUSA's beta value mean?

Houston American Energy's beta of 0.51 indicates that the stock value will be less variable compared to the whole stock market. The stock will exhibit muted movements in both the downside and upside, in response to changing economic conditions, whereas the general market may move by a lot more. Based on this beta value, HUSA appears to be a stock that an investor with a high-beta portfolio would look for to reduce risk exposure to the market.

How does HUSA's size and industry impact its risk?

A market capitalisation of USD $27.35M puts HUSA in the category of small-cap stocks, which tends to possess higher beta than larger companies. In addition to size, HUSA also operates in the oil, gas and consumable fuels industry, which has commonly demonstrated strong reactions to market-wide shocks. Therefore, investors may expect high beta associated with small companies, as well as those operating in the oil, gas and consumable fuels industry, relative to those more well-established firms in a more defensive industry. It seems as though there is an inconsistency in risks portrayed by HUSA’s size and industry relative to its actual beta value. A potential driver of this variance can be a fundamental factor, which we will take a look at next.

How HUSA'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 examine HUSA’s ratio of fixed assets to total assets to see whether the company is highly exposed to the risk of this type of constraint. HUSA'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. Thus, we can expect HUSA to be more volatile in the face of market movements, relative to its peers of similar size but with a lower proportion of fixed assets on their books. This outcome contradicts HUSA’s current beta value which indicates a below-average volatility.