Analyzing CCL Industries (OTCMKTS:CCDBF) and Ball (NYSE:BALL)

CCL Industries (OTCMKTS:CCDBF) and Ball (NYSE:BALL) are both consumer cyclical companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, analyst recommendations, dividends, risk, institutional ownership, profitability and valuation.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

37.2% of CCL Industries shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 86.5% of Ball shares are held by institutional investors. 0.8% of Ball shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current recommendations for CCL Industries and Ball, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
CCL Industries	0	1	0	0	2.00
Ball	1	8	4	0	2.23

CCL Industries presently has a consensus price target of $77.67, indicating a potential upside of 50.49%. Ball has a consensus price target of $65.17, indicating a potential downside of 3.26%. Given CCL Industries’ higher possible upside, research analysts plainly believe CCL Industries is more favorable than Ball.

Profitability

This table compares CCL Industries and Ball’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
CCL Industries	N/A	N/A	N/A
Ball	5.04%	23.81%	4.63%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares CCL Industries and Ball’s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
CCL Industries	N/A	N/A	N/A	$5.45	9.47
Ball	$14.03 billion	1.52	$707.00 million	$2.24	30.07

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

Dividends

CCL Industries pays an annual dividend of $1.02 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.0%. Ball pays an annual dividend of $0.80 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.2%. CCL Industries pays out 18.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Ball pays out 35.7% 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. CCL Industries is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Summary

Ball beats CCL Industries on 9 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About CCL Industries

CCL Industries Inc. manufactures and sells labels, consumer printable media products, technology-driven label solutions, polymer banknote substrates, and specialty films in Canada, the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and New Zealand. It operates through four segments: CCL, Avery, Checkpoint, and Innovia. The CCL segment offers pressure sensitive and extruded film materials for decorative, instructional, security, and functional applications in the consumer packaging, healthcare, chemicals, consumer durables, electronic device, and automotive markets. This segment also provides extruded and labeled plastic tubes, aluminum aerosols and specialty bottles, folded instructional leaflets, precision decorated and die cut components, electronic displays, polymer banknote substrate, and other complementary products and services. The Avery segment offers printable media products, including address and shipping labels, marketing and product identification labels, indexes and dividers, business cards, and name badges supported by customized software solutions; and organizational products, such as binders, sheet protectors, and writing instruments. This segment also provides direct to consumer digitally imaged media products, such as labels, business cards, name badges, and family oriented identification labels supported by unique web-enabled e-commerce URLs. The Checkpoint segment offers technology-driven loss-prevention, inventory management, and labelling solutions, including radio frequency and radio-frequency identification solutions to retail and apparel industries. The Innovia segment provides specialty, high-performance, multi-layer, and surface engineered biaxially oriented polypropylene films for pressure sensitive label materials, flexible packaging, and consumer packaged goods industries. CCL Industries Inc. was founded in 1951 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

About Ball

Ball Corporation supplies aluminum packaging products for the beverage, personal care, and household products industries in the United States, Brazil, and internationally. The company manufactures and sells aluminum beverage containers to fillers of carbonated soft drinks, beer, energy drinks, and other beverages. It also manufactures and sells extruded aluminum aerosol containers, recloseable aluminum bottles, aluminum cups, and aluminum slugs. Ball Corporation was founded in 1880 and is headquartered in Westminster, Colorado.