Comparing IDEX (NYSE:IEX) and Burnham (OTCMKTS:BURCA)

Burnham (OTCMKTS:BURCA) and IDEX (NYSE:IEX) are both industrials companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their risk, dividends, valuation, institutional ownership, profitability, earnings and analyst recommendations.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

1.5% of Burnham shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 98.0% of IDEX shares are held by institutional investors. 0.5% of IDEX shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and recommmendations for Burnham and IDEX, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Burnham	0	0	0	0	0.00
IDEX	0	1	5	0	2.83

IDEX has a consensus target price of $201.71, indicating a potential upside of 22.67%. Given IDEX’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe IDEX is more favorable than Burnham.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Burnham and IDEX”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Burnham	$270.18 million	0.31	$11.95 million	$3.48	7.07
IDEX	$3.27 billion	3.79	$505.00 million	$6.19	26.56

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

Profitability

This table compares Burnham and IDEX’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Burnham	5.93%	13.16%	7.64%
IDEX	14.05%	15.16%	8.60%

Risk & Volatility

Burnham has a beta of 0.17, suggesting that its share price is 83% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, IDEX has a beta of 1.04, suggesting that its share price is 4% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Dividends

Burnham pays an annual dividend of $0.92 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.7%. IDEX pays an annual dividend of $2.84 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.7%. Burnham pays out 26.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. IDEX pays out 45.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years. IDEX has raised its dividend for 16 consecutive years. Burnham is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Summary

IDEX beats Burnham on 15 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Burnham

Burnham Holdings, Inc. designs, manufactures, and sells boilers and related heating, ventilation, and air conditioning products and accessories for residential, commercial, and industrial applications in the United States and internationally. Its residential hydronic heating products include cast iron, stainless steel, and steel boilers; cast iron and steel heat distribution products; radiators; and warm air furnaces and central air conditioning systems for the residential heating and cooling markets, including units for the manufactured housing industry. The company's commercial and industrial heating products comprise a range of cast iron, stainless steel, fire tube, water tube, copper tube boilers, and water heaters; and boiler room accessories that are used for various applications, such as military bases, multi-unit residential buildings, health care, government, education, and hospital facilities. The company sells its residential products through wholesale distributors to builders, heating contractors, fuel dealers, and utilities for resale to end-use customers; and commercial products primarily through independent sales representatives, directly to contractors, or end users. Burnham Holdings, Inc. is based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

About IDEX

IDEX Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides applied solutions worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Fluid & Metering Technologies (FMT), Health & Science Technologies (HST), and Fire & Safety/Diversified Products (FSDP). The FMT segment designs, produces, and distributes positive displacement pumps, valves, small volume provers, flow meters, injectors, and other fluid-handling pump modules and systems, as well as flow monitoring and other services for the food, chemical, general industrial, water and wastewater, agricultural, and energy industries. The HST segment designs, produces, and distributes precision fluidics positive displacement pumps, powder and liquid processing technologies, drying systems, micro-precision components, pneumatic components and sealing solutions, high performance molded and extruded sealing components, custom mechanical and shaft seals, engineered hygienic mixers and valves, biocompatible medical devices and implantables, air compressors and blowers, optical components and coatings, laboratory and commercial equipment, and precision photonic solutions. This segment serves food and beverage, life sciences, analytical instruments, pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical, industrial, semiconductor, automotive/transportation, medical/dental, energy, cosmetics, marine, chemical, wastewater and water treatment, research and aerospace/defense markets. The FSDP segment designs, produces, and distributes firefighting pumps, valves and controls, rescue tools, lifting bags, and other components and systems for the fire and rescue industry; engineered stainless steel banding and clamping devices for various industrial and commercial applications; and precision equipment for dispensing, metering, and mixing colorants and paints used in retail and commercial businesses. IDEX Corporation was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois.