Head to Head Review: NRG Energy (NRG) & Its Rivals

NRG Energy (NYSE:NRG) is one of 76 publicly-traded companies in the “UTIL – ELEC PWR” industry, but how does it weigh in compared to its competitors? We will compare NRG Energy to similar businesses based on the strength of its profitability, dividends, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, earnings, risk and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent recommendations and price targets for NRG Energy and its competitors, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
NRG Energy	1	3	11	1	2.75
NRG Energy Competitors	1853	7524	6904	186	2.33

NRG Energy currently has a consensus price target of $198.21, indicating a potential upside of 26.25%. As a group, “UTIL – ELEC PWR” companies have a potential upside of 6.52%. Given NRG Energy’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities research analysts clearly believe NRG Energy is more favorable than its competitors.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

97.7% of NRG Energy shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 71.7% of shares of all “UTIL – ELEC PWR” companies are owned by institutional investors. 0.4% of NRG Energy shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 4.2% of shares of all “UTIL – ELEC PWR” companies are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk and Volatility

NRG Energy has a beta of 1.35, suggesting that its stock price is 35% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, NRG Energy’s competitors have a beta of -1.57, suggesting that their average stock price is 257% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Dividends

NRG Energy pays an annual dividend of $1.90 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.2%. NRG Energy pays out 48.2% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. As a group, “UTIL – ELEC PWR” companies pay a dividend yield of 3.0% and pay out 65.5% of their earnings in the form of a dividend. NRG Energy has increased its dividend for 1 consecutive years.

Profitability

This table compares NRG Energy and its competitors’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
NRG Energy	2.81%	109.48%	6.55%
NRG Energy Competitors	6.89%	8.63%	1.68%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares NRG Energy and its competitors top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
NRG Energy	$30.71 billion	$864.00 million	39.85
NRG Energy Competitors	$14.49 billion	$1.51 billion	21.52

NRG Energy has higher revenue, but lower earnings than its competitors. NRG Energy is trading at a higher price-to-earnings ratio than its competitors, indicating that it is currently more expensive than other companies in its industry.

Summary

NRG Energy beats its competitors on 11 of the 15 factors compared.

NRG Energy Company Profile

NRG Energy, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as an energy and home services company in the United States and Canada. It operates through Texas; East; West/Services/Other; Vivint Smart Home; and Corporate Activities segments. The company produces and sells electricity generated using coal, oil, solar, and battery storage; natural gas; and a cloud-based home platform, including hardware, software, sales, installation, customer service, technical support, and professional monitoring solutions. It offers retail electricity and energy management, line and surge protection products, HVAC installation, repair and maintenance, home protection products, carbon offsets, back-up power stations, portable power, portable solar, and portable lighting; retail services comprising demand response, commodity sales, energy efficiency, and energy management solutions; and system power, distributed generation, renewable and low-carbon products, carbon management and specialty services, backup generation, storage and distributed solar, and energy advisory services. In addition, the company trades in power, natural gas, and related commodities; environmental products; weather products; and financial products, including forwards, futures, options, and swaps. It offers its products and services under the NRG, Reliant, Direct Energy, Green Mountain Energy, and Vivint. It serves residential, commercial, government, industrial, and wholesale customers. NRG Energy, Inc. was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.