Financial Contrast: Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) & Vantage Drilling (OTCMKTS:VTGDF)

Vantage Drilling (OTCMKTS:VTGDF) and Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) are both energy companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, institutional ownership, valuation, earnings, analyst recommendations, profitability and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings for Vantage Drilling and Halliburton, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Vantage Drilling	0	0	0	0	0.00
Halliburton	1	6	18	0	2.68

Halliburton has a consensus target price of $43.10, indicating a potential upside of 24.45%. Given Halliburton’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Halliburton is more favorable than Vantage Drilling.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

85.2% of Halliburton shares are held by institutional investors. 7.5% of Vantage Drilling shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.6% of Halliburton shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Vantage Drilling and Halliburton”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Vantage Drilling	$138.25 million	N/A	$40.34 million	$4.40	N/A
Halliburton	$22.18 billion	1.30	$1.28 billion	$1.91	18.13

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

Risk & Volatility

Vantage Drilling has a beta of 0.45, meaning that its share price is 55% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Halliburton has a beta of 0.73, meaning that its share price is 27% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Vantage Drilling and Halliburton’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Vantage Drilling	38.80%	-9.97%	-6.50%
Halliburton	7.16%	18.71%	7.89%

Summary

Halliburton beats Vantage Drilling on 9 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Vantage Drilling

Vantage Drilling Company is in liquidation. Previously, the company was engaged in the provision of offshore contract drilling services for multinational oil and natural gas companies, government owned oil and natural gas companies, and independent oil and natural gas producers in the United States and internationally. Vantage Drilling Company was founded in 2007 and is based in Houston, Texas.

About Halliburton

Halliburton Company provides products and services to the energy industry worldwide. It operates through two segments, Completion and Production, and Drilling and Evaluation. The Completion and Production segment offers production enhancement services that include stimulation and sand control services; cementing services, such as well bonding and casing, and casing equipment; and completion tools that offer downhole solutions and services, including well completion products and services, intelligent well completions, and service tools, as well as liner hanger, sand control, and multilateral systems. This segment also provides electrical submersible pumps, as well as artificial lift services; production solutions comprising coiled tubing, hydraulic workover units, downhole tools, and pumping and nitrogen services; pipeline and process services, such as pre-commissioning, commissioning, maintenance, and decommissioning; and specialty chemicals and services. The Drilling and Evaluation segment offers drilling fluid systems, performance additives, completion fluids, solids control, specialized testing equipment, and waste management services; drilling systems and services; wireline and perforating services consists of open-hole logging, and cased-hole and slickline; and drill bits and services comprising roller cone rock bits, fixed cutter bits, hole enlargement, and related downhole tools and services, as well as coring equipment and services. This segment also provides cloud based digital services and artificial intelligence solutions on an open architecture for subsurface insights, integrated well construction, and reservoir and production management; testing and subsea services, such as acquisition and analysis of reservoir information and optimization solutions; and project management and integrated asset management services. Halliburton Company was founded in 1919 and is based in Houston, Texas.