Head-To-Head Review: North American Construction Group (NYSE:NOA) & Century Aluminum (NASDAQ:CENX)

North American Construction Group (NYSE:NOA) and Century Aluminum (NASDAQ:CENX) are both materials companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, valuation, risk, institutional ownership, dividends and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings for North American Construction Group and Century Aluminum, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
North American Construction Group	0	4	3	0	2.43
Century Aluminum	0	3	4	0	2.57

North American Construction Group presently has a consensus target price of $25.75, suggesting a potential upside of 177.57%. Century Aluminum has a consensus target price of $61.00, suggesting a potential upside of 82.25%. Given North American Construction Group’s higher probable upside, equities analysts clearly believe North American Construction Group is more favorable than Century Aluminum.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

75.0% of North American Construction Group shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 61.6% of Century Aluminum shares are held by institutional investors. 9.7% of North American Construction Group shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.8% of Century Aluminum shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares North American Construction Group and Century Aluminum’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
North American Construction Group	-0.61%	3.26%	0.74%
Century Aluminum	29.74%	47.45%	24.20%

Volatility and Risk

North American Construction Group has a beta of 1.06, meaning that its stock price is 6% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Century Aluminum has a beta of 2.17, meaning that its stock price is 117% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares North American Construction Group and Century Aluminum”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
North American Construction Group	$1.34 billion	0.19	$24.22 million	($0.27)	-34.36
Century Aluminum	$2.67 billion	1.24	$41.80 million	$8.53	3.92

Century Aluminum has higher revenue and earnings than North American Construction Group. North American Construction Group is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Century Aluminum, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Century Aluminum beats North American Construction Group on 11 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About North American Construction Group

North American Construction Group Ltd. provides mining and heavy civil construction services to customers in the resource development and industrial construction sectors in Australia, Canada, and the United States. The company operates Heavy Equipment – Canada, Heavy Equipment – Australia, and Other segments. It also offers mine management services for thermal coal mines; and construction and operations support services in the Canadian oil sands region. In addition, the company provides fully maintained heavy equipment rentals and full service mine operations support at metallurgical and thermal coal mines; heavy equipment rentals to iron ore, gold and lithium producers; and heavy equipment maintenance, component remanufacturing, and full equipment rebuild services to mining companies and other heavy equipment operators, as well as supplies production-critical components to the mining and construction industry. As of December 31, 2023, it operated a heavy equipment fleet of 900 units. The company was formerly known as North American Energy Partners Inc. and changed its name to North American Construction Group Ltd. in April 2018. North American Construction Group Ltd. was incorporated in 1953 and is headquartered in Acheson, Canada.

About Century Aluminum

Century Aluminum Company, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the production of standard-grade and value-added primary aluminum products in the United States and Iceland. It also owns and operates an alumina production facility in Iceland, and a carbon anode production facility in the Netherlands. The company was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.