Descripción de la empresa
Nuveen Variable Rate Preferred & Income Fund operates as a closed-end management investment company, managing a portfolio focused on variable rate preferred securities and income-generating assets. The entity functions within the Financial Services sector, specifically the Asset Management industry, where it provides investment management services to institutional and individual clients seeking fixed-income exposure with variable rate characteristics. The company's scale is defined by a market capitalization of $447.04M and an annual revenue of $46.57M, while the employee count is listed as N/A. These valuation metrics indicate that the fund maintains a significant asset base relative to its revenue generation, reflecting the capital-intensive nature of asset management firms where market cap often exceeds revenue due to the value of the underlying managed assets.
Salud financiera
The company reported a revenue of $46.57M and a net income of $46.84M for the trailing twelve months, while the EBITDA figure is not available in the provided data. The fact that net income slightly exceeds total revenue indicates an operating structure where costs are effectively netted out to generate profit on a basis that mirrors revenue, a characteristic often seen in highly efficient financial intermediaries or funds with minimal overhead relative to their fee structures. Free cash flow stands at $12.01M, which provides the company with a specific amount of liquidity available for debt repayment, share buybacks, or reinvestment after capital expenditures, though the low cash balance of $139,748 suggests that immediate cash holdings are minimal compared to operational cash generation. The gross margin is recorded at 100.0%, the operating margin at 83.1%, and the profit margin at 100.6%; these exceptionally high margins reveal that the company incurs negligible direct costs of goods sold and maintains a highly efficient cost structure where operating expenses are less than 17% of revenue. On the liability side, total debt amounts to $189.12M against a cash position of $139,748, resulting in a debt-to-equity ratio of 39.02, which indicates a highly leveraged balance sheet typical of closed-end funds utilizing leverage to amplify returns. The current ratio is 0.44, a figure below one that signals potential short-term liquidity constraints where current liabilities exceed current assets, requiring careful management of cash flow to meet obligations. Return on equity is 9.6% and return on assets is 3.1%, metrics that reveal the effectiveness of management in generating profits from shareholders' equity and the total asset base, respectively, with the ROA being lower due to the high leverage present in the capital structure.
Evaluación de valoración
The trailing twelve-month P/E ratio is 9.54, whereas the forward P/E is not available; this absence of a forward metric prevents a direct comparison regarding future earnings trajectory but suggests the current valuation is anchored in historical earnings rather than analyst consensus on future growth. The price-to-book ratio is 0.92, indicating that the market values the company's equity at slightly less than its book value, which often occurs in capital-intensive or leveraged financial institutions where asset values are conservative. The price-to-sales ratio stands at 9.60, a high multiple relative to revenue that suggests the market is pricing the company based on earnings power and fee income rather than traditional sales growth, while the EV/EBITDA metric is not available. The 52-week high is $20.12 and the 52-week low is $16.79, placing the current trading range within a specific band defined by these extremes; without the exact current share price, the precise percentage distance from the high or low cannot be calculated, but the range demonstrates the volatility captured over the last year. The beta value is 0.75, which implies that the stock price is less volatile than the broader market, moving with lower sensitivity to general market fluctuations compared to an index with a beta of 1.0.
Growth & Income
Revenue growth year-over-year is 6.4%, while earnings growth year-over-year is -15.7%, indicating that earnings are shrinking at a significantly faster rate than revenue, which implies a contraction in profitability or a one-time impact on net income that is not yet reflected in top-line sales. For dividend payers, the dividend yield is 10.2% and the payout ratio is 92.0%; this high payout ratio suggests that the company distributes the vast majority of its earnings to shareholders, leaving a small portion for reinvestment, and raises questions about sustainability given the negative earnings growth. Since the earnings growth is negative, the ability to sustain a 92.0% payout is constrained, as the company must rely on existing equity or other capital sources to fund the dividend when current earnings decline. Overall, the growth and income profile presents a high-yield instrument with moderate revenue expansion but deteriorating earnings performance, characteristic of a closed-end fund trading at a discount to its underlying asset values.