Financial Comparison: Nine Energy Service (NYSE:NINE) & NXT Energy Solutions (OTCMKTS:NSFDF)

Nine Energy Service (NYSE:NINE) and NXT Energy Solutions (OTCMKTS:NSFDF) are both small-cap energy companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, dividends, earnings, risk, institutional ownership, profitability and analyst recommendations.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

57.6% of Nine Energy Service shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 26.2% of NXT Energy Solutions shares are held by institutional investors. 4.1% of Nine Energy Service shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 34.1% of NXT Energy Solutions shares are held 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 Nine Energy Service and NXT Energy Solutions’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Nine Energy Service	-6.31%	N/A	-10.17%
NXT Energy Solutions	N/A	-65.19%	-22.05%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Nine Energy Service and NXT Energy Solutions”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Nine Energy Service	$571.17 million	0.03	-$41.08 million	($1.00)	-0.45
NXT Energy Solutions	$470,000.00	51.14	-$6.62 million	($0.04)	-5.50

NXT Energy Solutions has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Nine Energy Service. NXT Energy Solutions is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Nine Energy Service, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Volatility & Risk

Nine Energy Service has a beta of 2.83, indicating that its share price is 183% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, NXT Energy Solutions has a beta of 1.46, indicating that its share price is 46% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for Nine Energy Service and NXT Energy Solutions, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Nine Energy Service	1	0	0	0	1.00
NXT Energy Solutions	0	0	0	0	0.00

Summary

Nine Energy Service beats NXT Energy Solutions on 7 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Nine Energy Service

Nine Energy Service, Inc. operates as an onshore completion services provider that targets unconventional oil and gas resource development in North American basins and internationally. It offers cementing services, including blending high-grade cement and water with various solid and liquid additives to create a cement slurry that is pumped between the casing and the wellbore of the well. The company also provides open hole and cemented completion tool products, such as liner hangers and accessories, fracture isolation packers, frac sleeves, stage one prep tools, casing flotation tools, specialty open hole float equipment, disk subs, composite cement retainers, and centralizers that provide pinpoint frac sleeve system technologies. In addition, it offers wireline services consisting of plug-and-perf completions, which is a multistage well completion technique for cased-hole wells that consists of deploying perforating guns and isolation tools to a specified depth; and coiled tubing services, which perform wellbore intervention operations utilizing a continuous steel pipe that is transported to the wellsite wound on a large spool. The company was formerly known as NSC-Tripoint, Inc. and changed its name to Nine Energy Service, Inc. in October 2011. Nine Energy Service, Inc. was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.

About NXT Energy Solutions

NXT Energy Solutions Inc., a technology company, provides services to the oil and gas industry through its proprietary stress field detection (SFD) technology worldwide. Its SFD technology, a remote sensing airborne survey system utilizes quantum-scale sensors to detect gravity field perturbations in an airborne survey method which can be used onshore and offshore to remotely identify traps and reservoirs with hydrocarbon and geothermal exploration potential. The company was formerly known as Energy Exploration Technologies Inc. and changed its name to NXT Energy Solutions Inc. in September 2008. NXT Energy Solutions Inc. was incorporated in 1994 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.