Analyzing Sprott (NYSE:SII) & T. Rowe Price Group (NASDAQ:TROW)

Sprott (NYSE:SII) and T. Rowe Price Group (NASDAQ:TROW) are both finance companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, valuation, risk, institutional ownership, dividends, profitability and earnings.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

28.3% of Sprott shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 73.4% of T. Rowe Price Group shares are owned by institutional investors. 18.3% of Sprott shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 1.6% of T. Rowe Price Group shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for Sprott and T. Rowe Price Group, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Sprott	0	2	2	0	2.50
T. Rowe Price Group	4	11	0	0	1.73

Sprott presently has a consensus target price of $132.00, indicating a potential upside of 6.82%. T. Rowe Price Group has a consensus target price of $106.92, indicating a potential upside of 4.15%. Given Sprott’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities analysts plainly believe Sprott is more favorable than T. Rowe Price Group.

Volatility and Risk

Sprott has a beta of 1.02, indicating that its share price is 2% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, T. Rowe Price Group has a beta of 1.53, indicating that its share price is 53% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Dividends

Sprott pays an annual dividend of $1.60 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.3%. T. Rowe Price Group pays an annual dividend of $5.08 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.9%. Sprott pays out 82.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. T. Rowe Price Group pays out 55.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Sprott has raised its dividend for 1 consecutive years and T. Rowe Price Group has raised its dividend for 39 consecutive years. T. Rowe Price Group is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Sprott and T. Rowe Price Group”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Sprott	$178.65 million	17.84	$49.29 million	$1.95	63.37
T. Rowe Price Group	$7.09 billion	3.16	$2.10 billion	$9.18	11.18

T. Rowe Price Group has higher revenue and earnings than Sprott. T. Rowe Price Group is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Sprott, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Sprott and T. Rowe Price Group’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Sprott	23.26%	15.01%	11.97%
T. Rowe Price Group	28.89%	19.95%	15.09%

Summary

T. Rowe Price Group beats Sprott on 11 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Sprott

Sprott Inc. is a publicly owned asset management holding company. Through its subsidiaries, the firm provides asset management, portfolio management, wealth management, fund management, and administrative and consulting services to its clients. It offers mutual funds, hedge funds, and offshore funds, along with managed accounts. Further, the firm also provides broker-dealer activities. Sprott Inc. was formed on February 13, 2008 and is based in Toronto, Canada.

About T. Rowe Price Group

T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. is a publicly owned investment manager. The firm provides its services to individuals, institutional investors, retirement plans, financial intermediaries, and institutions. It launches and manages equity and fixed income mutual funds. The firm invests in the public equity and fixed income markets across the globe. It employs fundamental and quantitative analysis with a bottom-up approach. The firm utilizes in-house and external research to make its investments. It employs socially responsible investing with a focus on environmental, social, and governance issues. It makes investment in late-stage venture capital transactions and usually invests between $3 million and $5 million. The firm was previously known as T. Rowe Group, Inc. and T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. was founded in 1937 and is based in Baltimore, Maryland, with additional offices in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Owings Mills, Maryland; San Francisco, California; New York, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Tampa, Florida; Toronto, Ontario; Hellerup, Denmark; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg; Zurich, Switzerland; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; London, United Kingdom; Sydney, New South Wales; Hong Kong; Tokyo, Japan; Singapore; Frankfurt, Shanghai, China; Germany, Madrid, Spain, Milan, Italy, Stockholm, Sweden, Melbourne, Australia, Amsterdam, Netherlands and Washington, DC.