Critical Survey: IDEX (NYSE:IEX) and CVD Equipment (NASDAQ:CVV)

CVD Equipment (NASDAQ:CVV) and IDEX (NYSE:IEX) are both industrials companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, institutional ownership, profitability, analyst recommendations, risk, valuation and dividends.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

31.6% of CVD Equipment shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 98.0% of IDEX shares are owned by institutional investors. 28.7% of CVD Equipment shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.5% of IDEX shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current recommendations for CVD Equipment and IDEX, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
CVD Equipment	1	0	0	0	1.00
IDEX	0	3	6	0	2.67

IDEX has a consensus target price of $244.00, indicating a potential upside of 6.03%. Given IDEX’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe IDEX is more favorable than CVD Equipment.

Profitability

This table compares CVD Equipment and IDEX’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
CVD Equipment	-18.68%	-14.18%	-12.37%
IDEX	14.38%	15.29%	8.89%

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares CVD Equipment and IDEX”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
CVD Equipment	$21.30 million	2.05	-$1.59 million	($0.51)	-12.36
IDEX	$3.46 billion	4.93	$483.20 million	$6.76	34.04

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

Risk and Volatility

CVD Equipment has a beta of 1.23, indicating that its stock price is 23% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, IDEX has a beta of 0.98, indicating that its stock price is 2% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

IDEX beats CVD Equipment on 12 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About CVD Equipment

CVD Equipment Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, designs, develops, manufactures, and sells equipment to develop and manufacture materials and coatings in the United States and internationally. It operates through three segments: CVD Equipment, Stainless Design Concepts, and CVD Materials. The CVD Equipment segment offers chemical vapor deposition, physical vapor transport, and thermal process equipment under the FirstNano brand for various markets, such as high power electronics, aerospace advanced materials for gas turbine jet engines, and nanomaterials used in batteries, as well as semiconductors, LEDs, carbon nanotubes, nanowires, solar cells, and other industrial and research applications. The Stainless Design Concepts segment provides ultra-high purity gas and chemical delivery control systems, including gas cylinder storage cabinets, custom gas and chemical delivery systems, gas and liquid valve manifold boxes, and gas isolation boxes for semiconductor fabrication processes, aerospace, solar cells, LEDs, carbon nanotubes, nanowires, and industrial applications. The CVD Materials segment offers products related to advanced materials and coatings, such as MesoPlasma printing services and products comprising heaters, antennas, and sensors to aerospace, satellite, power generation, defense, and other markets. The company also provides annealing, diffusion, and low pressure chemical vapor deposition furnaces; and standard and custom fabricated quartz-ware used in its equipment and other customer tools. The company was incorporated in 1982 and is headquartered in Central Islip, New York.

About IDEX

IDEX Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides applied solutions worldwide. The company operates through three segments: Fluid & Metering Technologies (FMT), Health & Science Technologies (HST), and Fire & Safety/Diversified Products (FSDP). The FMT segment designs, produces, and distributes positive displacement pumps, valves, small volume provers, flow meters, injectors, and other fluid-handling pump modules and systems, as well as flow monitoring and other services for the food, chemical, general industrial, water and wastewater, agricultural, and energy industries. The HST segment designs, produces, and distributes precision fluidics positive displacement pumps, powder and liquid processing technologies, drying systems, micro-precision components, pneumatic components and sealing solutions, high performance molded and extruded sealing components, custom mechanical and shaft seals, engineered hygienic mixers and valves, biocompatible medical devices and implantables, air compressors and blowers, optical components and coatings, laboratory and commercial equipment, and precision photonic solutions. This segment serves food and beverage, life sciences, analytical instruments, pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical, industrial, semiconductor, automotive/transportation, medical/dental, energy, cosmetics, marine, chemical, wastewater and water treatment, research and aerospace/defense markets. The FSDP segment designs, produces, and distributes firefighting pumps, valves and controls, rescue tools, lifting bags, and other components and systems for the fire and rescue industry; engineered stainless steel banding and clamping devices for various industrial and commercial applications; and precision equipment for dispensing, metering, and mixing colorants and paints used in retail and commercial businesses. IDEX Corporation was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois.