Aqua America (WTR) vs. AquaVenture Holdings (WAAS) Head-To-Head Survey

Aqua America (NYSE: WTR) and AquaVenture Holdings (NASDAQ:WAAS) are both utilities companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, dividends, profitabiliy, earnings, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for Aqua America and AquaVenture Holdings, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Aqua America	1	2	2	0	2.20
AquaVenture Holdings	0	0	4	1	3.20

Aqua America presently has a consensus target price of $31.67, suggesting a potential downside of 3.07%. AquaVenture Holdings has a consensus target price of $27.00, suggesting a potential upside of 72.63%. Given AquaVenture Holdings’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe AquaVenture Holdings is more favorable than Aqua America.

Profitability

This table compares Aqua America and AquaVenture Holdings’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Aqua America	28.41%	12.62%	3.80%
AquaVenture Holdings	-21.12%	-6.72%	-4.64%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

50.3% of Aqua America shares are held by institutional investors. 0.3% of Aqua America shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Aqua America and AquaVenture Holdings’ revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	EBITDA	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Aqua America	$815.06 million	7.12	$457.59 million	$1.30	25.13
AquaVenture Holdings	$115.98 million	3.56	$15.78 million	N/A	N/A

Aqua America has higher revenue and earnings than AquaVenture Holdings.

Dividends

Aqua America pays an annual dividend of $0.77 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.4%. AquaVenture Holdings does not pay a dividend. Aqua America pays out 59.2% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. AquaVenture Holdings has raised its dividend for 9 consecutive years.

Summary

Aqua America beats AquaVenture Holdings on 9 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

Aqua America Company Profile

Aqua America, Inc. is a holding company. The Company is engaged in providing water or wastewater services concentrated in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Illinois, North Carolina, New Jersey, Indiana and Virginia. The Company is the holding company for its primary subsidiary, Aqua Pennsylvania, Inc. Its market-based activities are conducted through Aqua Resources, Inc. (Aqua Resources) and Aqua Infrastructure, LLC (Aqua Infrastructure). Aqua Resources, Inc. provides water and wastewater service through operating and maintenance contracts with municipal authorities and other parties close to its utility companies’ service territories, and offers, through a third party, water and sewer line repair service and protection solutions to households. Aqua Infrastructure provides non-utility raw water supply services for firms in the natural gas drilling industry. The Company owns several wastewater collection systems that convey the wastewater to a municipally-owned facility for treatment.

AquaVenture Holdings Company Profile

AquaVenture Holdings Limited is a multinational provider of Water-as-a-Service solutions. The Company’s segments are Seven Seas Water and Quench. The Seven Seas Water segment provides outsourced desalination solutions and wastewater treatment for governmental, municipal, industrial and hospitality customers. The Quench segment provides bottleless filtered water coolers and other products that use filtered water as an input, such as ice machines, sparkling water dispensers and coffee brewers, to customers throughout the United States typically under multi-year contracts. The Company’s solutions utilize seawater reverse osmosis and other purification technologies to produce potable and industrial process water in high volumes for customers operating in regions with limited access to potable water. As of December 31, 2016, it operated 10 water treatment facilities in the Caribbean region and South America producing approximately eight billion gallons of purified water per year.