ATRenew (NYSE:RERE) versus AstroNova (NASDAQ:ALOT) Critical Review

ATRenew (NYSE:RERE) and AstroNova (NASDAQ:ALOT) are both small-cap consumer discretionary companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, profitability, risk, institutional ownership, dividends, valuation and earnings.

Dividends

ATRenew pays an annual dividend of $0.10 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.4%. AstroNova pays an annual dividend of $0.28 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.0%. ATRenew pays out 40.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. AstroNova pays out -155.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for ATRenew and AstroNova, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
ATRenew	0	1	1	0	2.50
AstroNova	1	0	0	0	1.00

ATRenew presently has a consensus target price of $5.50, suggesting a potential upside of 29.56%. Given ATRenew’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities analysts clearly believe ATRenew is more favorable than AstroNova.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares ATRenew and AstroNova”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
ATRenew	$3.01 billion	0.31	$48.09 million	$0.25	16.98
AstroNova	$152.17 million	1.49	-$2.38 million	($0.18)	-160.83

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

Institutional & Insider Ownership

19.3% of ATRenew shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 43.0% of AstroNova shares are held by institutional investors. 10.7% of ATRenew shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 12.6% of AstroNova shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares ATRenew and AstroNova’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
ATRenew	1.90%	11.48%	7.98%
AstroNova	-0.88%	2.94%	1.61%

Volatility & Risk

ATRenew has a beta of 0.31, indicating that its share price is 69% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, AstroNova has a beta of 0.86, indicating that its share price is 14% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

ATRenew beats AstroNova on 11 of the 16 factors compared between the two stocks.

About ATRenew

ATRenew Inc., through its subsidiaries, operates pre-owned consumer electronics transactions and services platform in the People's Republic of China. It primarily sells mobile phones, laptops, tablets, drones, digital cameras; and vintage bags, watches, liquor, gold, and various household goods through its online platforms and offline stores, as well as provides services to third-party merchants to sell the products through its platforms. The company was formerly known as AiHuiShou International Co. Ltd. and changed its name to ATRenew Inc. November 2021. The company was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in Shanghai, the People's Republic of China.

About AstroNova

AstroNova, Inc. designs, develops, manufactures, and distributes specialty printers, and data acquisition and analysis systems in the United States, Europe, Asia, Canada, Central and South America, and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Product Identification (PI) and Test & Measurement (T&M). The PI segment offers tabletop and production-ready digital color label printers, and OEM printing systems under the QuickLabel brand; digital color label mini-presses and inline printing systems under the TrojanLabel brand; and label materials, tags material, inks, toners, and thermal transfer ribbions under the GetLabels brand. This segment also develops and licenses various specialized software programs to design and manage labels and print images; and provides training and support. This segment serves chemicals, cosmetics, food and beverage, medical products, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and other industries; and brand owners, label converters, commercial printers, and packaging manufacturers. The T&M segment offers airborne printing solutions, such as ToughWriter used to print hard copies of navigation maps, arrival and departure information, flight itineraries, weather maps, performance data, passenger data, and various air traffic control data; ToughSwitch, an ethernet switches used to connect multiple computers or Ethernet devices; TMX data acquisition systems; Daxus DXS-100 distributed data acquisition platform; SmartCorder DDX100 portable data acquisition systems for facility and field testing; and Everest EV-5000, a digital strip chart recording system used primarily in aerospace and defense. This segment serves aerospace and aerospace and defense, automotive, commercial airline, energy, manufacturing, and transportation industries. The company was formerly known as Astro-Med, Inc. and changed its name to AstroNova, Inc. in May 2016. AstroNova, Inc. was incorporated in 1969 and is headquartered in West Warwick, Rhode Island.