Critical Review: WBI (NYSE:WBI) and Halliburton (NYSE:HAL)

WBI (NYSE:WBI) and Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) are both energy companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, risk, profitability, dividends, earnings, valuation and institutional ownership.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

85.2% of Halliburton shares are held by institutional investors. 50.6% of WBI shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.6% of Halliburton shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares WBI and Halliburton’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
WBI	0.54%	0.85%	0.41%
Halliburton	8.90%	18.36%	7.84%

Volatility & Risk

WBI has a beta of 0.14, indicating that its share price is 86% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Halliburton has a beta of 0.76, indicating that its share price is 24% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for WBI and Halliburton, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
WBI	0	2	4	2	3.00
Halliburton	1	5	18	0	2.71

WBI presently has a consensus target price of $36.75, indicating a potential upside of 45.86%. Halliburton has a consensus target price of $43.86, indicating a potential upside of 34.66%. Given WBI’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe WBI is more favorable than Halliburton.

Dividends

WBI pays an annual dividend of $0.20 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.8%. Halliburton pays an annual dividend of $0.68 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.1%. WBI pays out 250.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Halliburton pays out 28.5% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Halliburton has increased its dividend for 4 consecutive years. Halliburton is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares WBI and Halliburton”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
WBI	$525.55 million	5.92	$11.89 million	$0.08	314.95
Halliburton	$22.18 billion	1.21	$1.28 billion	$2.39	13.63

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

Summary

Halliburton beats WBI on 12 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About WBI

WaterBridge Infrastructure LLC is an integrated, pure-play water infrastructure company. WaterBridge Infrastructure LLC is based in HOUSTON.

About Halliburton

Halliburton Company provides products and services to the energy industry worldwide. It operates through two segments, Completion and Production, and Drilling and Evaluation. The Completion and Production segment offers production enhancement services that include stimulation and sand control services; cementing services, such as well bonding and casing, and casing equipment; and completion tools that offer downhole solutions and services, including well completion products and services, intelligent well completions, and service tools, as well as liner hanger, sand control, and multilateral systems. This segment also provides electrical submersible pumps, as well as artificial lift services; production solutions comprising coiled tubing, hydraulic workover units, downhole tools, and pumping and nitrogen services; pipeline and process services, such as pre-commissioning, commissioning, maintenance, and decommissioning; and specialty chemicals and services. The Drilling and Evaluation segment offers drilling fluid systems, performance additives, completion fluids, solids control, specialized testing equipment, and waste management services; drilling systems and services; wireline and perforating services consists of open-hole logging, and cased-hole and slickline; and drill bits and services comprising roller cone rock bits, fixed cutter bits, hole enlargement, and related downhole tools and services, as well as coring equipment and services. This segment also provides cloud based digital services and artificial intelligence solutions on an open architecture for subsurface insights, integrated well construction, and reservoir and production management; testing and subsea services, such as acquisition and analysis of reservoir information and optimization solutions; and project management and integrated asset management services. Halliburton Company was founded in 1919 and is based in Houston, Texas.