Reviewing Alarm.com (NASDAQ:ALRM) and Brady (NYSE:BRC)

Alarm.com (NASDAQ:ALRM) and Brady (NYSE:BRC) are both mid-cap industrials companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, valuation, profitability, earnings, dividends, analyst recommendations and institutional ownership.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for Alarm.com and Brady, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Alarm.com	1	4	0	1	2.17
Brady	0	0	1	1	3.50

Alarm.com presently has a consensus target price of $57.00, indicating a potential upside of 31.64%. Given Alarm.com’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Alarm.com is more favorable than Brady.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Alarm.com and Brady”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Alarm.com	$1.01 billion	2.13	$132.57 million	$2.46	17.60
Brady	$1.51 billion	2.58	$189.26 million	$4.27	19.38

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

Insider & Institutional Ownership

91.7% of Alarm.com shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 76.3% of Brady shares are owned by institutional investors. 5.8% of Alarm.com shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 15.6% of Brady shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk and Volatility

Alarm.com has a beta of 0.83, meaning that its share price is 17% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Brady has a beta of 0.65, meaning that its share price is 35% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Alarm.com and Brady’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Alarm.com	13.11%	14.79%	5.67%
Brady	13.01%	18.62%	12.99%

Summary

Brady beats Alarm.com on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Alarm.com

Alarm.com Holdings, Inc. provides various Internet of Things (IoT) and solutions for residential, multi-family, small business, and enterprise commercial markets in North America and internationally. The company operates through two segments, Alarm.com and Other. It offers solutions to control and monitor security systems, as well as to IoT devices, including door locks, garage doors, thermostats, and video cameras; and video monitoring and analytics solutions, such as video analytics, escalated events, video doorbells, intelligent integration, live streaming, secure cloud storage, and video alerts. The company also provides scenes, video analytics triggers, thermostat schedules, responsive savings, precision comfort, energy usage monitoring, places feature, whole home water safety, and solar monitoring solutions, as well as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning monitoring services. In addition, it offers demand response programs, commercial grade video, commercial video analytics, access control, cell connectors, enterprise dashboard and multi-site management, energy savings, protection for valuables and inventory, temperature monitoring, and daily safeguard solutions. Further, the company provides a permission-based online portal that provides account management, sales, marketing, training, and support tools; a unified interface that displays key operational and customer experience indicators, including technician performance, system reliability and customer engagement metrics; installation and support services; MobileTech Application and Remote Toolkit; video health reports; smart gateway; AI-powered enhancements to professional monitoring and false alarm reduction; Web services and business intelligence; sales, marketing, and training services; and home builder programs. Additionally, it offers electric utility grid and water management, indoor gunshot detection, and health and wellness and data-rich emergency response solutions. The company was founded in 2000 and is based in Tysons, Virginia.

About Brady

Brady Corporation manufactures and supplies identification solutions (IDS) and workplace safety (WPS) products to identify and protect premises, products, and people in the United States and internationally. The company offers materials, printing systems, RFID, and bar code scanners for product identification, brand protection labeling, work in process labeling, finished product identification, and industrial track and trace applications; safety signs, floor-marking tapes, pipe markers, labeling systems, spill control products, lockout/tagout device, and software and services for safety compliance auditing, procedure writing, and training; and hand-held printers, wire markers, sleeves, and tags for wire identification. It also provides name tags, badges, lanyards, rigid card printing systems, and access control software for people identification; and wristbands, labels, printing systems, and other products for tracking and improving the safety of patients. In addition, the company offers workplace safety, identification, and compliance products, such as safety and compliance signs, tags, labels, and markings; informational signage and markings; asset tracking labels; facility safety and personal protection equipment; first-aid products; and other compliance products for process, government, education, construction, and utilities industries. Further, it provides stock and custom identification products; and sells related resale products. The company serves industrial and electronic manufacturing, healthcare, chemical, oil, gas, automotive, aerospace, governments, mass transit, electrical contractors, education, leisure and entertainment, telecommunications, and other industries through distributors, direct sales force, and digital channels. Brady Corporation was incorporated in 1914 and is headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.