Reviewing Nutrien (NYSE:NTR) and Cibus (NASDAQ:CBUS)

Nutrien (NYSE:NTR) and Cibus (NASDAQ:CBUS) are both basic materials companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, dividends, analyst recommendations, earnings, risk, valuation and institutional ownership.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent recommendations for Nutrien and Cibus, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Nutrien	2	7	9	0	2.39
Cibus	0	0	0	0	N/A

Nutrien currently has a consensus price target of $78.84, suggesting a potential upside of 22.07%. Given Nutrien’s higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Nutrien is more favorable than Cibus.

Risk & Volatility

Nutrien has a beta of 0.93, suggesting that its share price is 7% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Cibus has a beta of 1.91, suggesting that its share price is 91% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

62.8% of Nutrien shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 21.7% of Cibus shares are held by institutional investors. 3.1% of Nutrien shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 4.4% of Cibus shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Nutrien and Cibus’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Nutrien	11.05%	16.41%	7.69%
Cibus	-10,176.78%	-26.34%	-14.99%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Nutrien and Cibus’ revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Nutrien	$33.48 billion	0.95	$7.66 billion	$7.12	9.07
Cibus	$323,000.00	982.49	-$16.89 million	($18.00)	-0.83

Nutrien has higher revenue and earnings than Cibus. Cibus is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Nutrien, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Nutrien beats Cibus on 10 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Nutrien

Nutrien Ltd. provides crop inputs and services. The company operates through Retail, Potash, Nitrogen, and Phosphate segments. The Retail segment distributes crop nutrients, crop protection products, seeds, and merchandise products. The Potash segment provides granular and standard potash products. The Nitrogen segment offers ammonia, urea, urea ammonium nitrate, industrial grade ammonium nitrate, and ammonium sulfate. The Phosphate segment provides solid fertilizer, liquid fertilizer, and industrial and feed products. In addition, it provides services directly to growers through a network of farm centers in North America, South America, and Australia. The company was incorporated in 2017 and is headquartered in Saskatoon, Canada.

About Cibus

Cibus, Inc., a agricultural technology company, develops and licenses plant traits to seed companies for royalties. The company primarily focus on trait productivity in two areas, including productivity traits that enable farmers to have higher yields and reduce the use of the crop protection chemicals and fertilizers; and sustainable ingredients that enable corporations to replace ingredients that are fossil fuel based or whose production results in increased greenhouse gases. The company is based in San Diego, California.