Reviewing AstroNova (NASDAQ:ALOT) and HP (NYSE:HPQ)

HP (NYSE:HPQ) and AstroNova (NASDAQ:ALOT) are both technology companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, risk, valuation, profitability, dividends, analyst recommendations and institutional ownership.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for HP and AstroNova, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
HP	5	8	0	2	1.93
AstroNova	1	0	0	0	1.00

HP presently has a consensus price target of $25.17, suggesting a potential downside of 22.94%. Given HP’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, research analysts clearly believe HP is more favorable than AstroNova.

Profitability

This table compares HP and AstroNova’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
HP	4.14%	-947.78%	7.43%
AstroNova	-0.88%	2.94%	1.61%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

77.5% of HP shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 43.0% of AstroNova shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.2% of HP shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 12.6% of AstroNova shares are owned by 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.

Dividends

HP pays an annual dividend of $1.20 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.7%. AstroNova pays an annual dividend of $0.28 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.0%. HP pays out 45.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. AstroNova pays out -155.6% 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. HP has raised its dividend for 15 consecutive years. HP is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares HP and AstroNova”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
HP	$55.30 billion	0.53	$2.53 billion	$2.62	12.47
AstroNova	$152.17 million	1.49	-$2.38 million	($0.18)	-161.06

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

Risk and Volatility

HP has a beta of 1.18, indicating that its share price is 18% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, AstroNova has a beta of 0.85, indicating that its share price is 15% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

HP beats AstroNova on 13 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About HP

HP Inc. provides products, technologies, software, solutions, and services to individual consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses, and large enterprises, including customers in the government, health, and education sectors worldwide. It operates through Personal Systems and Printing segments. The Personal Systems segment offers commercial personal computers (PCs), consumer PCs, workstations, thin clients, commercial tablets and mobility devices, retail point-of-sale systems, displays and other related accessories, software, support, and services for the commercial and consumer markets. The Printing segment provides consumer and commercial printer hardware, supplies, media, solutions, and services, as well as scanning devices; and laserJet and enterprise, inkjet and printing, graphics, and 3D printing solutions. The company was formerly known as Hewlett-Packard Company and changed its name to HP Inc. in October 2015. HP Inc. was founded in 1939 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

About AstroNova

AstroNova, Inc. designs, develops, manufactures, and distributes specialty printers, and data acquisition and analysis systems in the United States, Europe, Asia, Canada, Central and South America, and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Product Identification (PI) and Test & Measurement (T&M). The PI segment offers tabletop and production-ready digital color label printers, and OEM printing systems under the QuickLabel brand; digital color label mini-presses and inline printing systems under the TrojanLabel brand; and label materials, tags material, inks, toners, and thermal transfer ribbions under the GetLabels brand. This segment also develops and licenses various specialized software programs to design and manage labels and print images; and provides training and support. This segment serves chemicals, cosmetics, food and beverage, medical products, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and other industries; and brand owners, label converters, commercial printers, and packaging manufacturers. The T&M segment offers airborne printing solutions, such as ToughWriter used to print hard copies of navigation maps, arrival and departure information, flight itineraries, weather maps, performance data, passenger data, and various air traffic control data; ToughSwitch, an ethernet switches used to connect multiple computers or Ethernet devices; TMX data acquisition systems; Daxus DXS-100 distributed data acquisition platform; SmartCorder DDX100 portable data acquisition systems for facility and field testing; and Everest EV-5000, a digital strip chart recording system used primarily in aerospace and defense. This segment serves aerospace and aerospace and defense, automotive, commercial airline, energy, manufacturing, and transportation industries. The company was formerly known as Astro-Med, Inc. and changed its name to AstroNova, Inc. in May 2016. AstroNova, Inc. was incorporated in 1969 and is headquartered in West Warwick, Rhode Island.