Financial Survey: LiqTech International (LIQT) and Fuel Tech (FTEK)

LiqTech International (NYSE: LIQT) and Fuel Tech (NASDAQ:FTEK) are both small-cap industrials companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, profitabiliy, risk, earnings, analyst recommendations, dividends and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for LiqTech International and Fuel Tech, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
LiqTech International	0	0	0	0	N/A
Fuel Tech	0	0	0	0	N/A

Institutional and Insider Ownership

25.0% of Fuel Tech shares are held by institutional investors. 13.9% of Fuel Tech shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares LiqTech International and Fuel Tech’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
LiqTech International	-28.07%	-57.07%	-30.07%
Fuel Tech	-35.70%	-23.03%	-18.13%

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares LiqTech International and Fuel Tech’s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	EBITDA	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
LiqTech International	$13.24 million	1.01	-$4.56 million	N/A	N/A
Fuel Tech	$45.83 million	0.46	-$8.31 million	($0.74)	-1.19

LiqTech International has higher revenue, but lower earnings than Fuel Tech.

Summary

Fuel Tech beats LiqTech International on 5 of the 8 factors compared between the two stocks.

LiqTech International Company Profile

LiqTech International, Inc. is a clean technology company that provides technologies for gas and liquid purification by manufacturing ceramic silicon carbide filters. The Company develops and manufactures products of re-crystallized silicon carbide. It specializes in two business areas, which include ceramic membranes for liquid filtration, and diesel particulate filters (DPFs) for the control of soot exhaust particles from diesel engines. Under the LiqTech, Cometas and Provital brand names, it manufactures and sells ceramic silicon carbide membranes and systems for liquid filtration using silicon carbide technology that focus on hydrocarbon production-derived contaminated water and pre-filtration for reverse osmosis. It offers DPFs for exhaust emission control solutions to the retrofit and the original equipment manufacturer markets. It also offers Kiln furniture, which refers to various items used in a kiln to support ceramics that maximizes the number of items for each firing.

Fuel Tech Company Profile

Fuel Tech, Inc. is a technology company. The Company is engaged in the development, commercialization and application of technologies for air pollution control, process optimization, combustion efficiency and engineering services. It operates through three segments: Air Pollution Control technology, FUEL CHEM technology and Fuel Conversion. The Air Pollution Control technology segment includes technologies to manage nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions in flue gas from boilers, incinerators, furnaces and other stationary combustion sources. The FUEL CHEM technology segment uses chemical processes in combination with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and chemical kinetics modeling (CKM) boiler modeling, for the control of slagging, fouling, corrosion, opacity and other sulfur trioxide-related issues in furnaces and boilers through the addition of chemicals into the furnace. The Fuel Conversion segment represents the CARBONITE fuel conversion process and technology.