Critical Review: Northern Dynasty Minerals (NAK) and Its Peers

Northern Dynasty Minerals (NASDAQ:NAK) is one of 54 public companies in the “Gold & Silver Ores” industry, but how does it contrast to its peers? We will compare Northern Dynasty Minerals to related companies based on the strength of its risk, earnings, institutional ownership, dividends, valuation, analyst recommendations and profitability.

Risk & Volatility

Northern Dynasty Minerals has a beta of -0.6, meaning that its share price is 160% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Northern Dynasty Minerals’ peers have a beta of 0.83, meaning that their average share price is 17% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and recommmendations for Northern Dynasty Minerals and its peers, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Northern Dynasty Minerals	0	0	1	0	3.00
Northern Dynasty Minerals Competitors	464	1112	1054	24	2.24

Northern Dynasty Minerals currently has a consensus target price of $2.50, suggesting a potential upside of 26.26%. As a group, “Gold & Silver Ores” companies have a potential upside of 32.88%. Given Northern Dynasty Minerals’ peers higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Northern Dynasty Minerals has less favorable growth aspects than its peers.

Profitability

This table compares Northern Dynasty Minerals and its peers’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Northern Dynasty Minerals	N/A	N/A	N/A
Northern Dynasty Minerals Competitors	-56.04%	0.43%	0.77%

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Northern Dynasty Minerals and its peers gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Northern Dynasty Minerals	N/A	N/A	-18.00
Northern Dynasty Minerals Competitors	$901.64 million	-$221.11 million	-35.44

Northern Dynasty Minerals’ peers have higher revenue, but lower earnings than Northern Dynasty Minerals. Northern Dynasty Minerals is trading at a higher price-to-earnings ratio than its peers, indicating that it is currently more expensive than other companies in its industry.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

10.6% of Northern Dynasty Minerals shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 29.0% of shares of all “Gold & Silver Ores” companies are owned by institutional investors. 2.2% of Northern Dynasty Minerals shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 10.8% of shares of all “Gold & Silver Ores” companies are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Northern Dynasty Minerals peers beat Northern Dynasty Minerals on 8 of the 12 factors compared.

About Northern Dynasty Minerals

Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. engages in the exploration of mineral properties in the United States. Its principal mineral property is the Pebble Copper-Gold-Molybdenum-Silver-Rhenium project comprising 1,840 mineral claims that covers an area of approximately 274 square miles located in southwest Alaska, 17 miles from the villages of Iliamna and Newhalen, and approximately 200 miles southwest of the city of Anchorage. The company was formerly known as Northern Dynasty Explorations Ltd. and changed its name to Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. in October 1997. Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. was incorporated in 1983 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.