Financial Comparison: North American Construction Group (NYSE:NOA) & Kodiak Gas Services (NYSE:KGS)

North American Construction Group (NYSE:NOA) and Kodiak Gas Services (NYSE:KGS) are both energy companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, dividends, profitability, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, risk and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for North American Construction Group and Kodiak Gas Services, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
North American Construction Group	0	0	1	1	3.50
Kodiak Gas Services	0	1	10	0	2.91

Kodiak Gas Services has a consensus target price of $40.64, suggesting a potential upside of 20.19%. Given Kodiak Gas Services’ higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Kodiak Gas Services is more favorable than North American Construction Group.

Dividends

North American Construction Group pays an annual dividend of $0.35 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.1%. Kodiak Gas Services pays an annual dividend of $1.80 per share and has a dividend yield of 5.3%. North American Construction Group pays out 34.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Kodiak Gas Services pays out 339.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. North American Construction Group has raised its dividend for 3 consecutive years and Kodiak Gas Services has raised its dividend for 2 consecutive years.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

75.0% of North American Construction Group shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 25.0% of Kodiak Gas Services shares are owned by institutional investors. 9.7% of North American Construction Group shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.3% of Kodiak Gas Services shares are owned by 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.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares North American Construction Group and Kodiak Gas Services”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
North American Construction Group	$850.88 million	0.59	$32.17 million	$1.01	16.39
Kodiak Gas Services	$1.16 billion	2.59	$49.90 million	$0.53	63.79

Kodiak Gas Services has higher revenue and earnings than North American Construction Group. North American Construction Group is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Kodiak Gas Services, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Volatility & Risk

North American Construction Group has a beta of 1.24, meaning that its share price is 24% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Kodiak Gas Services has a beta of 1.35, meaning that its share price is 35% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares North American Construction Group and Kodiak Gas Services’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
North American Construction Group	3.24%	23.70%	5.64%
Kodiak Gas Services	3.93%	8.49%	2.67%

About North American Construction Group

North American Construction Group Ltd. provides mining and heavy civil construction services to customers in the resource development and industrial construction sectors in Australia, Canada, and the United States. The company operates Heavy Equipment – Canada, Heavy Equipment – Australia, and Other segments. It also offers mine management services for thermal coal mines; and construction and operations support services in the Canadian oil sands region. In addition, the company provides fully maintained heavy equipment rentals and full service mine operations support at metallurgical and thermal coal mines; heavy equipment rentals to iron ore, gold and lithium producers; and heavy equipment maintenance, component remanufacturing, and full equipment rebuild services to mining companies and other heavy equipment operators, as well as supplies production-critical components to the mining and construction industry. As of December 31, 2023, it operated a heavy equipment fleet of 900 units. The company was formerly known as North American Energy Partners Inc. and changed its name to North American Construction Group Ltd. in April 2018. North American Construction Group Ltd. was incorporated in 1953 and is headquartered in Acheson, Canada.

About Kodiak Gas Services

Kodiak Gas Services, Inc. operates contract compression infrastructure for customers in the oil and gas industry in the United States. It operates in two segments, Compression Operations and Other Services. The Compression Operations segment operates company-owned and customer-owned compression infrastructure to enable the production, gathering, and transportation of natural gas and oil. The Other Services segment provides a range of contract services, including station construction, maintenance and overhaul, and other ancillary time and material-based offerings. The company was formerly known as Frontier TopCo, Inc. Kodiak Gas Services, Inc. was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas.