Head-To-Head Survey: Nucor (NYSE:NUE) vs. Acerinox (OTCMKTS:ANIOY)

Acerinox (OTCMKTS:ANIOY) and Nucor (NYSE:NUE) are both basic materials companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, earnings, profitability, dividends, valuation, analyst recommendations and institutional ownership.

Risk and Volatility

Acerinox has a beta of 1.1, meaning that its share price is 10% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Nucor has a beta of 1.74, meaning that its share price is 74% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

76.5% of Nucor shares are held by institutional investors. 0.5% of Nucor shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for Acerinox and Nucor, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Acerinox	0	1	3	0	2.75
Nucor	0	1	7	1	3.00

Nucor has a consensus target price of $155.7778, indicating a potential upside of 7.82%. Given Nucor’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Nucor is more favorable than Acerinox.

Profitability

This table compares Acerinox and Nucor’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Acerinox	1.59%	3.54%	1.41%
Nucor	4.21%	6.65%	4.15%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Acerinox and Nucor”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Acerinox	$5.86 billion	0.50	$243.41 million	$0.19	30.89
Nucor	$30.73 billion	1.08	$2.03 billion	$5.54	26.08

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

Dividends

Acerinox pays an annual dividend of $0.22 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.7%. Nucor pays an annual dividend of $2.20 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.5%. Acerinox pays out 115.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Nucor pays out 39.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Nucor has increased its dividend for 52 consecutive years.

Summary

Nucor beats Acerinox on 16 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Acerinox

Acerinox, S.A., together with its subsidiaries, manufactures, process, and markets stainless steel products in Spain, the United States, Africa, Asia, Rest of Europe, and internationally. It operates through Stainless steel, and High-performance Alloys segments. The company offers flat products, including hot and cold rolled coils and sheets, strips, flat bars, and discs, as well as engraved coil and sheet, black coil, slabs, circles, billets, and plates. It provides long products, which include wire and hexagonal wire rods, peeled bars, hot and cold reinforcement bars, black bars, profiles, angles, and steel profiles, as well as stainless steel, color coated, and reinforcement wires. In additions, it offers stainless steel products, such as austenitic, ferritic, duplex, and martensitic. Acerinox, S.A. was incorporated in 1970 and is headquartered in Madrid, Spain.

About Nucor

Nucor Corporation engages in manufacture and sale of steel and steel products. It operates in three segments: steel mills, steel products, and raw materials. The Steel Mills segment produces hot-rolled, cold-rolled, and galvanized sheet steel products; plate steel products; wide-flange beams, beam blanks, and H-piling and sheet piling structural steel products; bar steel products, such as blooms, billets, concrete reinforcing and merchant bars, and engineered special bar quality products; and engages in the steel trading and rebar distribution businesses. This segment sells its products to steel service centers, fabricators, and manufacturers in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The Steel Products segment offers steel joists and joist girders, steel decks, and galvanized torque tubes for used in solar arrays, hollow structural section steel tubing, electrical conduit, fabricated concrete reinforcing steel, cold finished steel, steel fasteners, steel grating and expanded metal, wire and wire mesh, metal building systems, insulated metal panels, steel racking, overhead doors, and utility towers and structures for communications and energy transmission. This segment is also involved in the piling distribution business. The Raw Materials segment produces direct reduced iron (DRI); brokers ferrous and nonferrous metals, pig iron, hot briquetted iron, and DRI; supplies ferro-alloys; processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap metal; and engages in the natural gas production and industrial gas business. This segment sells its ferrous scrap to electric arc furnace steel mills and foundries for manufacturing process; and nonferrous scrap metal to aluminum can producers, secondary aluminum smelters, steel mills and other processors, and consumers of various nonferrous metals. It markets its products through in-house sales force; and internal distribution and trading companies. Nucor Corporation was founded in 1905 and is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina.