Contrasting Alfa Laval (OTCMKTS:ALFVY) and KBR (NYSE:KBR)

Alfa Laval (OTCMKTS:ALFVY) and KBR (NYSE:KBR) are both construction companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, earnings, valuation, analyst recommendations, dividends, profitability and risk.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

0.0% of Alfa Laval shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 97.0% of KBR shares are owned by institutional investors. 1.1% of KBR shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Alfa Laval and KBR, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Alfa Laval	0	5	0	0	2.00
KBR	0	6	4	0	2.40

KBR has a consensus price target of $62.78, indicating a potential upside of 32.60%. Given KBR’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe KBR is more favorable than Alfa Laval.

Profitability

This table compares Alfa Laval and KBR’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Alfa Laval	11.86%	19.35%	9.10%
KBR	4.52%	33.65%	7.33%

Risk & Volatility

Alfa Laval has a beta of 1.34, indicating that its share price is 34% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, KBR has a beta of 0.68, indicating that its share price is 32% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Dividends

Alfa Laval pays an annual dividend of $0.76 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.6%. KBR pays an annual dividend of $0.66 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.4%. Alfa Laval pays out 40.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. KBR pays out 23.9% 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. KBR has raised its dividend for 6 consecutive years.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Alfa Laval and KBR”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Alfa Laval	$6.33 billion	3.11	$699.19 million	$1.87	25.48
KBR	$7.74 billion	0.79	$375.00 million	$2.76	17.15

Alfa Laval has higher earnings, but lower revenue than KBR. KBR is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Alfa Laval, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

KBR beats Alfa Laval on 10 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Alfa Laval

Alfa Laval Corporate AB provides heat transfer, separation, and fluid handling products and solutions worldwide. It operates in three divisions: Energy, Food & Water, and Marine. The company offers oil/gas-fired steam and composite steam boilers, exhaust gas economizer, and ballast water treatment systems, and exhaust gas cleaning products. It also provides sensing and control, cleaning validation, condition monitoring, agitators, tank, powder mixers, fittings, and tubes, as well as wall mounted cleaning nozzles, rotary jet and heads; and tank accessories and covers. In addition, the company offers centrifugal, rotary lobe, three screw, twin screw, and circumferential piston pumps. Further, it provides butterfly, control and check, double seal, diaphragm, double seat, regulating, safety, sampling, shutter, single seat, and ball valves. Additionally, the company offers heat exchanger, tube-in-tube heat exchangers, and process shell-and-tube heat exchangers. Furthermore, it provides finned tube air heat, scraped surface heat exchangers, and various plate heat exchangers, wet surface, and HYAC hybrid air coolers. The company also offers decanters and separator related products. It serves energy, utilities, home, personal care, food, dairy, beverage, marine, transportation, pharmaceutical, biotech, water, and wastewater industries. Alfa Laval Corporate AB was founded in 1883 and is headquartered in Lund, Sweden.

About KBR

KBR, Inc. provides scientific, technology, and engineering solutions to governments and commercial customers worldwide. It operates through Government Solutions and Sustainable Technology Solutions segments. The Government Solutions segment offers life-cycle support solutions to defense, intelligence, space, aviation, and other programs and missions for military and other government agencies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Its services cover research and development, advanced prototyping, acquisition support, systems engineering, cyber analytics, space domain awareness, test and evaluation, systems integration and program management, global supply chain management, and operations readiness and support, as well as command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance services. This segment also provides various professional advisory services to the defense, renewable energy, and critical infrastructure sectors. The Sustainable Technology Solutions segment operates portfolio of various proprietary process technologies for ammonia/syngas, chemical/petrochemicals, clean refining, and circular process/circular economy solutions. This segment also provides synergistic services, including advisory and consulting focused on broad-based energy transition and net-zero carbon emission solutions; high-end engineering, design and program management centered around decarbonization, energy efficiency, environmental impact and asset optimization; and digitally-enabled operating and monitoring solutions. KBR, Inc. was founded in 1901 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.