Head-To-Head Analysis: Smart Sand (NASDAQ:SND) & Nine Energy Service (NYSE:NINE)

Nine Energy Service (NYSE:NINE) and Smart Sand (NASDAQ:SND) are both small-cap energy companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, profitability, risk, analyst recommendations, valuation, earnings and institutional ownership.

Profitability

This table compares Nine Energy Service and Smart Sand’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Nine Energy Service	-6.31%	N/A	-10.17%
Smart Sand	1.16%	-7.55%	-5.25%

Volatility and Risk

Nine Energy Service has a beta of 2.83, meaning that its share price is 183% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Smart Sand has a beta of 0.77, meaning that its share price is 23% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

57.6% of Nine Energy Service shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 35.2% of Smart Sand shares are held by institutional investors. 4.1% of Nine Energy Service shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 32.3% of Smart Sand shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings for Nine Energy Service and Smart Sand, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Nine Energy Service	1	0	0	0	1.00
Smart Sand	0	1	0	0	2.00

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Nine Energy Service and Smart Sand”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Nine Energy Service	$571.17 million	0.03	-$41.08 million	($1.00)	-0.41
Smart Sand	$311.37 million	0.40	$2.99 million	$0.09	32.00

Smart Sand has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Nine Energy Service. Nine Energy Service is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Smart Sand, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Smart Sand beats Nine Energy Service on 8 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Nine Energy Service

Nine Energy Service, Inc. operates as an onshore completion services provider that targets unconventional oil and gas resource development in North American basins and internationally. It offers cementing services, including blending high-grade cement and water with various solid and liquid additives to create a cement slurry that is pumped between the casing and the wellbore of the well. The company also provides open hole and cemented completion tool products, such as liner hangers and accessories, fracture isolation packers, frac sleeves, stage one prep tools, casing flotation tools, specialty open hole float equipment, disk subs, composite cement retainers, and centralizers that provide pinpoint frac sleeve system technologies. In addition, it offers wireline services consisting of plug-and-perf completions, which is a multistage well completion technique for cased-hole wells that consists of deploying perforating guns and isolation tools to a specified depth; and coiled tubing services, which perform wellbore intervention operations utilizing a continuous steel pipe that is transported to the wellsite wound on a large spool. The company was formerly known as NSC-Tripoint, Inc. and changed its name to Nine Energy Service, Inc. in October 2011. Nine Energy Service, Inc. was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.

About Smart Sand

Smart Sand, Inc., an integrated frac and industrial sand supply and services company, engages in the excavation, processing, and sale of sands or proppant for use in hydraulic fracturing operations in the oil and gas industry in the United States. It also provides proppant logistics services; and wellsite storage solutions through SmartSystems products and services. The company sells its products primarily to oil and natural gas exploration and production companies, oilfield service companies, and industrial manufacturers. Smart Sand, Inc. was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in Spring, Texas.