Critical Review: Utz Brands (NYSE:UTZ) versus Darling Ingredients (NYSE:DAR)

Utz Brands (NYSE:UTZ) and Darling Ingredients (NYSE:DAR) are both consumer staples 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.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for Utz Brands and Darling Ingredients, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Utz Brands	1	3	4	0	2.38
Darling Ingredients	0	1	10	2	3.08

Utz Brands presently has a consensus target price of $12.06, suggesting a potential upside of 56.46%. Darling Ingredients has a consensus target price of $69.00, suggesting a potential upside of 19.18%. Given Utz Brands’ higher probable upside, equities analysts clearly believe Utz Brands is more favorable than Darling Ingredients.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Utz Brands and Darling Ingredients”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Utz Brands	$1.44 billion	0.77	$800,000.00	($0.10)	-77.05
Darling Ingredients	$6.14 billion	1.50	$62.80 million	$1.38	41.95

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

Insider & Institutional Ownership

96.0% of Utz Brands shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 94.4% of Darling Ingredients shares are owned by institutional investors. 12.7% of Utz Brands shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 1.9% of Darling Ingredients shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Utz Brands and Darling Ingredients’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Utz Brands	-0.58%	8.61%	4.17%
Darling Ingredients	3.54%	5.65%	2.61%

Risk & Volatility

Utz Brands has a beta of 0.87, indicating that its share price is 13% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Darling Ingredients has a beta of 1.07, indicating that its share price is 7% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Darling Ingredients beats Utz Brands on 10 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Utz Brands

Utz Brands, Inc. engages in manufacture, marketing, and distribution of snack foods. It offers a range of salty snacks, including salty snacks, including potato chips, tortilla chips, pretzels, cheese snacks, pork skins, veggie snacks, pub/party mixes, tortilla chips, salsa and dips, ready-to-eat popcorn, and other snacks under the Utz, Zapp’s, ON THE BORDER, Golden Flake, Boulder Canyon, Hawaiian, TORTIYAHS!, etc. The company sells its products to wholesale and other distributors, grocery stores, convenience and drug stores, discount stores, mass merchandisers, membership club stores, hard discounters, and specialty and e-commerce retailers. Utz Brands, Inc. was founded in 1921 and is headquartered in Hanover, Pennsylvania.

About Darling Ingredients

Darling Ingredients Inc. develops, produces, and sells natural ingredients from edible and inedible bio-nutrients in North America, Europe, China, South America, and internationally. The company operates through three segments: Feed Ingredients, Food Ingredients, and Fuel Ingredients. It offers ingredients and customized specialty solutions for customers in the pharmaceutical, food, pet food, feed, industrial, fuel, bioenergy, and fertilizer industries. The company also collects and transforms various animal by-product streams into useable and specialty ingredients, such as collagen, edible fats, feed-grade fats, animal proteins and meals, plasma, pet food ingredients, organic fertilizers, yellow grease, fuel feedstock, green energy, natural casings, and hides. In addition, it recovers and converts used cooking oil and animal fats, and residual bakery products into valuable feed and fuel ingredients. Further, the company provides environmental services, including grease trap collection and disposal services to food service establishments. It primarily operates under the Rendac, Sonac, FASA, Ecoson, Rousselot, Gelnex, and CTH brand names. The company was formerly known as Darling International Inc. and changed its name to Darling Ingredients Inc. in May 2014. Darling Ingredients Inc. was founded in 1882 and is headquartered in Irving, Texas.