Western Asset High Income Fund II Inc. Common Stock (HIX)

FairStock Score: 65/100 — STEADY

Key Financials

AI Analysis

AI-generated, general educational analysis — not personal investment advice.

I approach HIX not as an operating company but as a closed-end fixed-income fund. Its business is simple: Western Asset manages a global high-yield debt portfolio. Any moat would come from the manager's credit selection, yet the figures give me no durable operating advantage to underwrite. At the close on 2026-10-13, the price was $3.46 and the market capitalization was $357.5M. FairStock's calculations show a P/E of 6.78, P/B of 0.83, ROE of 12.05%, ROCE of 4.71%, and a dividend yield of 15.60%. Those are not the marks of a stable compounder; they are the marks of a leveraged income vehicle. The P/B figure implies a discount to book value, and the Graham Number of $6.93 with a 50.07% margin of safety is superficially appealing. But Graham would ask whether that book value and distribution are trustworthy. The Piotroski F-Score of 1/9 and Altman Z-Score of 0.49 say the financial-strength calculations are weak. Debt to equity is 0.46, and beta is 0.91. Growth is impossible for me to judge: revenue and profit growth are listed as N/A, only 0 years of filed results are available, and the computed Lynch category is none because three years are needed. A 15.60% yield may be attractive, but in high-yield credit it can also be a warning about default, rate, or distribution risk. My margin of safety depends on the quality of the bonds and whether the discount to book is real, not on the headline yield. I would want evidence of covered distributions and stable net asset value before treating the discount as a true bargain.

In plain English: This fund owns a portfolio of higher-yielding bonds from around the world. The numbers look mixed: it trades below its stated book value and has a high income yield, but its financial-strength measures are weak and the data do not provide enough reported history to judge growth. At $3.46, the price looks cheap on several simple value measures, though the high yield and weak scores point to real credit and distribution risk.

The full AI analysis, bull and bear case and key monitorables are in FairStock Pro.

Data as of 2026-10-13 close · note generated 2026-10-15 · model deepseek-flash

Fundamentals from company filings and market-data providers; prices are end-of-day, not real-time. AI-generated analysis is general and educational — not personal investment advice. Scoring methodology · Score test · Disclaimer