Reviewing Bloom Energy (NYSE:BE) and Ormat Technologies (NYSE:ORA)

Ormat Technologies (NYSE:ORA) and Bloom Energy (NYSE:BE) are both energy companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, institutional ownership, dividends, risk, analyst recommendations, earnings and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings and price targets for Ormat Technologies and Bloom Energy, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Ormat Technologies	0	2	8	0	2.80
Bloom Energy	3	10	11	2	2.46

Ormat Technologies currently has a consensus price target of $129.44, indicating a potential upside of 5.61%. Bloom Energy has a consensus price target of $128.29, indicating a potential downside of 17.26%. Given Ormat Technologies’ stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities analysts clearly believe Ormat Technologies is more favorable than Bloom Energy.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Ormat Technologies and Bloom Energy”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Ormat Technologies	$879.65 million	8.47	$123.73 million	$2.18	56.22
Bloom Energy	$2.02 billion	18.12	-$88.43 million	($0.38)	-408.05

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

Volatility and Risk

Ormat Technologies has a beta of 0.77, suggesting that its share price is 23% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Bloom Energy has a beta of 3.07, suggesting that its share price is 207% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

95.5% of Ormat Technologies shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 77.0% of Bloom Energy shares are held by institutional investors. 0.6% of Ormat Technologies shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 3.5% of Bloom Energy 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.

Profitability

This table compares Ormat Technologies and Bloom Energy’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Ormat Technologies	14.12%	5.35%	2.36%
Bloom Energy	-4.37%	8.38%	2.05%

Summary

Ormat Technologies beats Bloom Energy on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Ormat Technologies

Ormat Technologies, Inc. engages in the geothermal and recovered energy power business in the United States, Indonesia, Kenya, Turkey, Chile, Guatemala, Guadeloupe, New Zealand, Honduras, and internationally. It operates in three segments: Electricity, Product, and Energy Storage. The Electricity segment develops, builds, owns, and operates geothermal, solar photovoltaic, and recovered energy-based power plants; and sells electricity. The Product segment designs, manufactures, and sells equipment for geothermal and recovered energy-based electricity generation; and provides services relating to the engineering, procurement, construction, operation, and maintenance of geothermal and recovered energy-based power plants. This segment serves contractors; and owners and operators of interstate natural gas pipelines, gas processing plants, and cement plants, as well as companies in other energy-intensive industrial processes. The Energy Storage segment offers battery energy storage systems and related services. Ormat Technologies, Inc. was founded in 1965 and is headquartered in Reno, Nevada.

About Bloom Energy

Bloom Energy Corporation designs, manufactures, sells, and installs solid-oxide fuel cell systems for on-site power generation in the United States and internationally. The company offers Bloom Energy Server, a solid oxide technology that converts fuel, such as natural gas, biogas, hydrogen, or a blend of these fuels into electricity through an electrochemical process without combustion. It sells its products through direct and indirect sales channels to utilities, data centers, agriculture, retail, hospitals, higher education, biotech, and manufacturing industries. The company was formerly known as Ion America Corp. and changed its name to Bloom Energy Corporation in 2006. Bloom Energy Corporation was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.