ARQ (ARQ) and Its Competitors Critical Analysis

ARQ (NASDAQ:ARQ) is one of 295 public companies in the “Chemicals” industry, but how does it compare to its competitors? We will compare ARQ to related businesses based on the strength of its valuation, dividends, earnings, risk, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership and profitability.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and target prices for ARQ and its competitors, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
ARQ	1	1	1	0	2.00
ARQ Competitors	3248	12212	14131	519	2.40

ARQ currently has a consensus price target of $5.00, indicating a potential upside of 97.63%. As a group, “Chemicals” companies have a potential upside of 8.88%. Given ARQ’s higher probable upside, equities analysts plainly believe ARQ is more favorable than its competitors.

Profitability

This table compares ARQ and its competitors’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
ARQ	-38.79%	-0.84%	-0.61%
ARQ Competitors	-59.14%	-0.41%	-1.37%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares ARQ and its competitors gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
ARQ	$120.34 million	-$52.61 million	-2.14
ARQ Competitors	$6.40 billion	$222.31 million	6.28

ARQ’s competitors have higher revenue and earnings than ARQ. ARQ is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than its competitors, indicating that it is currently more affordable than other companies in its industry.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

18.5% of ARQ shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 47.4% of shares of all “Chemicals” companies are owned by institutional investors. 20.1% of ARQ shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 13.7% of shares of all “Chemicals” companies are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk and Volatility

ARQ has a beta of 2.12, suggesting that its stock price is 112% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, ARQ’s competitors have a beta of 0.93, suggesting that their average stock price is 7% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

ARQ competitors beat ARQ on 8 of the 13 factors compared.

ARQ Company Profile

Arq, Inc. is a holding company. It engages in the provision of environmental and emission control equipment to the power generation industry. The company operates through the following Segments: Refined Coal and Advanced Purification Technologies. The Refined Coal segment includes the Tinuum Group, Tinuum Services, and GWN Manager. The Advanced Purification Technologies segment refers to the sale of Activated Carbon Injection and Dry Sorbent Injection equipment systems, chemical sales, consulting services, and other sales related to the reduction of emissions in the coal-fired electric generation process and the electric utility industry. The company was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Greenwood Village, CO.