Head to Head Review: CompoSecure (NASDAQ:CMPO) & Fortive (NYSE:FTV)

Fortive (NYSE:FTV) and CompoSecure (NASDAQ:CMPO) are both industrials companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, analyst recommendations, valuation, dividends, risk, profitability and institutional ownership.

Risk & Volatility

Fortive has a beta of 1.07, suggesting that its share price is 7% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, CompoSecure has a beta of 0.98, suggesting that its share price is 2% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

94.9% of Fortive shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 37.6% of CompoSecure shares are held by institutional investors. 0.7% of Fortive shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 52.1% of CompoSecure shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for Fortive and CompoSecure, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Fortive	2	9	2	0	2.00
CompoSecure	0	0	5	0	3.00

Fortive presently has a consensus target price of $61.27, indicating a potential upside of 1.71%. CompoSecure has a consensus target price of $26.00, indicating a potential upside of 107.17%. Given CompoSecure’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe CompoSecure is more favorable than Fortive.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Fortive and CompoSecure”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Fortive	$4.16 billion	4.37	$579.20 million	$1.69	35.65
CompoSecure	$160.68 million	9.87	-$53.72 million	($2.16)	-5.81

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

Profitability

This table compares Fortive and CompoSecure’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Fortive	12.38%	15.33%	8.23%
CompoSecure	-24.53%	-65.50%	26.83%

Summary

Fortive beats CompoSecure on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Fortive

Fortive Corporation designs, develops, manufactures, and services professional and engineered products, software, and services in the United States, China, and internationally. It operates in three segments: Intelligent Operating Solutions, Precision Technologies, and Advanced Healthcare Solutions. The Intelligent Operating Solutions segment provides advanced instrumentation, software, and services, including electrical test and measurement, facility and asset lifecycle software applications, and connected worker safety and compliance solutions for manufacturing, process industries, healthcare, utilities and power, communications and electronics, and other industries. This segment markets its products and services under the ACCRUENT, FLUKE, GORDIAN, INDUSTRIAL SCIENTIFIC, INTELEX, PRUFTECHNIK, and SERVICECHANNEL brands. The Precision Technologies segment offers electrical test and measurement, sensing and material technologies for industrial, power and energy, automotive, medical equipment, food and beverage, aerospace and defense, semiconductor, and other general industries under the ANDERSON-NEGELE, GEMS, SETRA, HENGSTLER-DYNAPAR, QUALITROL, PACIFIC SCIENTIFIC, KEITHLEY, and TEKTRONIX brand names. The Advanced Healthcare Solutions segment provides critical workflow solutions comprising instrument sterilization, instrument tracking, design and manufacture of cell therapy equipment, biomedical test tools, radiation detection and safety monitoring, and end-to-end clinical productivity software and solutions under the ASP, CENSIS, CENSITRAC, EVOTECH, FLUKE BIOMEDICAL, INVETECH, LANDAUER, PROVATION, RAYSAFE, and STERRAD brands. Fortive Corporation was incorporated in 2015 and is headquartered in Everett, Washington.

About CompoSecure

CompoSecure, Inc. manufactures and designs metal, composite, and proprietary financial transaction cards in the United States and internationally. Its primary metal form factors include embedded, metal veneer lite, metal veneer, and full metal products. The company also offers Arculus Cold Storage Wallet, a three-factor authentication solution, which supports specific digital assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, non-fungible tokens and others. In addition, it offers Payments + Arculus Secure Authenticate, white-labeled cold storage wallet, Payments + Arculus Cold Storage, and Payments + Arculus Authentication + Arculus Cold Storage. The company serves financial institutions, plastic card manufacturers, system integrators, and security specialists. CompoSecure, Inc. was founded in 1910 and is based in Somerset, New Jersey.