Critical Contrast: Art’s-Way Manufacturing (NASDAQ:ARTW) vs. urban-gro (NASDAQ:UGRO)

Art’s-Way Manufacturing (NASDAQ:ARTW) and urban-gro (NASDAQ:UGRO) are both small-cap industrials companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, earnings, institutional ownership, risk, dividends, analyst recommendations and profitability.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current recommendations for Art’s-Way Manufacturing and urban-gro, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Art’s-Way Manufacturing	0	0	0	0	0.00
urban-gro	0	0	0	1	4.00

Risk and Volatility

Art’s-Way Manufacturing has a beta of 0.77, indicating that its share price is 23% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, urban-gro has a beta of 1.85, indicating that its share price is 85% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Art’s-Way Manufacturing and urban-gro”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Art’s-Way Manufacturing	$24.50 million	0.76	$310,000.00	N/A	N/A
urban-gro	$71.54 million	0.07	-$25.44 million	($1.12)	-0.37

Art’s-Way Manufacturing has higher earnings, but lower revenue than urban-gro.

Profitability

This table compares Art’s-Way Manufacturing and urban-gro’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Art’s-Way Manufacturing	9.61%	4.94%	2.80%
urban-gro	N/A	N/A	N/A

Insider & Institutional Ownership

2.9% of Art’s-Way Manufacturing shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 20.6% of urban-gro shares are owned by institutional investors. 52.8% of Art’s-Way Manufacturing shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 26.9% of urban-gro shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Art’s-Way Manufacturing beats urban-gro on 6 of the 11 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Art’s-Way Manufacturing

Art’s-Way Manufacturing Co., Inc. manufactures and distributes farm equipment products. It operates through the Agricultural Products, and Modular Buildings segments. The Agricultural Products segment manufactures a variety of specialized farm machinery under its own label including portable and stationary animal feed processing equipment and related attachments used to mill and mix feed grains into custom animal feed rations, a line of forage equipment consisting of forage boxes, bale processors, running gear, and dump boxes, a line of manure spreaders, sugar beet harvesting equipment, and a line of dirt work equipment. The Modular Buildings segment produces and sells modular buildings, which are custom designed to meet the specific research needs of its customers. It also provides services relating to the design, manufacturing, delivery, installation and renting of the building units that it produces. The company was founded by Arthur Luscombe in 1956 and is headquartered in Armstrong, IA.

About urban-gro

urban-gro, Inc. engages in the designing, engineering, building, and integrating complex environmental equipment systems for indoor controlled environment agriculture (CEA) cultivation and retail facilities in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The company provides architectural design, engineering, and construction services comprising pre-construction, cultivation space programming (CSP), architectural and interior design, engineering, integrated cultivation design, owner's representative/construction management, and general contracting services; and maintenance, training, and support services. It also offers facility and equipment commissioning services; gro-care crop and asset protection services, including training services, equipment maintenance services, asset protection program, and an interactive online operating support system for gro-care and client document delivery and project management; and property condition assessment services. In addition, the company provides integrated equipment systems solutions, such as design, source, and integration of complex environmental equipment systems comprising heating, ventilation, and air conditioning solutions, as well as environmental control, fertigation, irrigation distribution, water treatment, and wastewater reclamation systems; and commercial horticulture lighting solutions, rolling and automated container benching systems, specialty fans, microbial mitigation, and odor reduction systems. Further, it offers value-Added Reselling (VAR) of cultivation equipment systems; and strategic vendor relationships with premier manufacturers. It primarily markets and sells its solutions to clients in the CEA that includes operators and facilitators in the cannabis and produce markets; and commercial sectors comprising food and beverage consumer packaged goods companies, healthcare, higher education, and hospitality. urban-gro, Inc. was founded in 2014 and is based in Lafayette, Colorado.