The beta (β) of an investment security (i.e., a stock) is a measurement of its volatility of returns relative to the entire market. It is used as a measure of risk and is an integral part of the Capital Asset Pricing Model . A company with a higher beta has greater risk and also greater expected returns. By estimating the unlevered beta and re-lever it using the company’s debt-to-equity ratio, we will be able to find out the beta for private firms. Calculate the beta of the comparable company The second step is to calculate the beta of the comparable company.

After executing this calculation we find that the fintech company’s unlevered beta is 1.26. Is a measure that assesses a company’s market risk while including the impact of its debt. Normally, beta is calculated with the effect of the firm’s debt included. It is also a key component of the Capital Asset Pricing Model, which is often used to estimate a firm’s cost of equity financing. To calculate unlevered beta, you first need to calculate the standard or normal beta, as described earlier. Stocks with higher betas are expected to provide higher returns during periods when the market as a whole is rising.

Why do we Unlever and Relever Beta?

This version of beta can be thought of as “levered” because it includes the effect of the company’s use of debt, or leverage. When beta is less than 1, the security is expected to be less volatile than the market. When beta is greater than 1, then the security is expected to be even more volatile than the market in general. The value of beta tells you the relationship between the returns on an investment and the returns on the market. The only constant assumption across all companies is the 35.0% tax rate. Simply put, systematic risk is caused by external factors that are beyond the control of a specific company or organization.

CAPMThe Capital Asset Pricing Model defines the expected return from a portfolio of various securities with varying degrees of risk. It also considers the volatility of a particular security in relation to the market. Unlevered beta is a measure of volatility with respect to the entire market. The following equation is used to calculate an unlevered or asset beta. Hence, to determine a company’s equity beta, all you need to do is retrieve it from those websites.

The Structured Query Language comprises several different data types that allow it to store different types of information… Below is an example analysis of how to switch between Equity and Asset Beta. Let’s analyze a few of the results to illustrate better how it works.

These numbers in practice would be found through identifying a peer group for Biotech Oasis. Financial information from the peer group would then be averaged out in order to find the average levered beta and the average debt to equity ratio for the biotechnology industry. When unlevering AI Spark’s beta, there is a massive reduction of 0.62 or 36.47%. This is primarily due to its large debt to equity ratio of 73%. When measuring AI Spark’s risk profile with debt and equity we find a beta that is 36% higher than when we measure AI Spark’s risk profile without debt.

What is Beta in Finance?

After that, compute the median value from this set, and again re-lever the same as per the capital structure of your company. Is part of the IIFL Group, a leading financial services player and a diversified NBFC. The site provides comprehensive and real time information on Indian corporates, sectors, financial markets and economy. On the site we feature industry and political leaders, entrepreneurs, and trend setters. The research, personal finance and market tutorial sections are widely followed by students, academia, corporates and investors among others.

Once they do so, they can use the following formula to determine its ungeared beta. It is important to measure the riskiness of an individual company’s assets by removing any impact that debt has, and only evaluate how risky the equity of a company is. Levered beta takes into account the capital structure of a company, including debt. Typically, a company’s debt can have a profound effect on its risk profile. The first, and simplest, way is to use the company’s historical β or just select the company’s beta from Bloomberg.

Using this information, you can compute unlevered beta by merely placing them in the appropriate formula. Thereafter you can use this in the formula of unlevered beta and get the requisite value. Now that you know the meaning of unlevered beta, let’s shift our focus to its other aspects like working and calculation. Unlevered beta is usually less than or equal to the levered beta.

• Usually, unlevered beta is lower than a company’s overall beta.
• An analyst may also choose to adjust a company’s capital structure to experiment with the different effects it will have on levered beta.
• Unlevered beta is a very useful metric to assess the risk and volatility of a stock.
• Ltd. and use its annual report figures to calculate levered beta.
• The measure is used to summarize the effects this type of leverage has on a firm’s cost of capital—over and above the cost of capital as if the firm had no debt.

Unlevered beta can be found by modifying a firm’s regular beta. When beta is exactly equal to 1, then the asset is expected to move in precisely with the market. Get instant access to video lessons taught by experienced investment bankers. Learn financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel shortcuts. The use of unlevered beta formula beta as a proxy for risk has received widespread criticism from many practitioners, who believe it to be a flawed measure of risk. All securities, some more than others, are exposed to systematic risk, which is otherwise known as “non-diversifiable” risk as it cannot be reduced by increasing the number of portfolio holdings.

Example of Unlevered Beta

It is similar to equity beta but uses returns generated from debts instead. Although debt beta is a crucial component of the systematic risk calculation, it is insignificant in value. Essentially, beta measures the volatility of an investment relative to the systematic risk in that market. The beta coefficient quantifies that correlation through regression analysis. Investors can use this metric as a part of the Capital Asset Pricing Model .

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Re-Levered Beta

Unlevered beta is also known as asset beta because the firm’s risk without debt is calculated just based on its asset. The Unlevered Beta formula is the measurement of the risk of a company with the impact of debt. It measures the risk of the firm’s business, which is unleveraged to the risk of the market. It will always be lower than the levered beta since it strips off the debt component, which adds to the risk. When you look up a company’s beta on Bloomberg, the default number you see is levered, reflecting the debt of that company.

It is the opposite of levered beta, also known as equity beta. Equity beta shows a stock’s volatility against the returns of the equity market. However, ungeared beta removes the impact of financial leverage for that volatility. Since it does so, a stock’s unlevered beta will always be lower than its levered beta.

Each of these data points represents an individual stock’s returns against those of the market as a whole. So, beta effectively describes the activity of a security’s returns as it responds to swings in the market. On the other hand, an unlevered beta deleverages or removes debt from the company’s fundamentals before computing market risks of the company.

However, they may also divide it into two types, including levered and unlevered beta. Most online financial databases (Ex. Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, and Bloomberg) will provide you with the levered betas, equity values , and total debt for each company. In this case, we used the simplified American corporate tax rate of 21% for each company.

Unlevering beta eliminates any positive or negative impact of having debt in the company’s capital structure. So by comparing unlevered beta with the unlevered beta of other companies, investors can get a clear idea of the equity risk they are assuming. Overall, investors prefer using unlevered beta when they want to measure a publicly-listed stock’s performance in relation to market fluctuations without the effects of debt. It can also be a great tool for comparing the betas of various companies with varying capital structures.