Albemarle (NYSE:ALB) versus EMS-CHEMIE (OTCMKTS:EMSHF) Head-To-Head Review

EMS-CHEMIE (OTCMKTS:EMSHF) and Albemarle (NYSE:ALB) are both materials companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, valuation, risk, institutional ownership, dividends and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings for EMS-CHEMIE and Albemarle, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
EMS-CHEMIE	0	1	1	0	2.50
Albemarle	1	10	15	0	2.54

Albemarle has a consensus target price of $190.04, suggesting a potential upside of 42.12%. Given Albemarle’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Albemarle is more favorable than EMS-CHEMIE.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares EMS-CHEMIE and Albemarle”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
EMS-CHEMIE	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Albemarle	$5.14 billion	3.07	-$510.63 million	$0.27	495.24

EMS-CHEMIE has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Albemarle.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

6.6% of EMS-CHEMIE shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 92.9% of Albemarle shares are held by institutional investors. 0.4% of Albemarle shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares EMS-CHEMIE and Albemarle’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
EMS-CHEMIE	N/A	N/A	N/A
Albemarle	3.09%	10.96%	5.39%

Summary

Albemarle beats EMS-CHEMIE on 9 of the 9 factors compared between the two stocks.

About EMS-CHEMIE

EMS-CHEMIE HOLDING AG engages in the high performance polymers and specialty chemicals businesses in the United States, Europe, Asia, and internationally. The company's High Performance Polymers segment is involved in the manufacture and supply of high-performance polyamide granulate. Its Specialty Chemicals segment develops, produces, and sells fibers, fusible adhesives, and adhesive yarns for technical and textile applications, powder coatings, and reactive diluents. The company also offers bonding, coating, sealing, and damping systems; and hotmelt adhesives, crosslinkers, epoxy systems, technical fibers, adhesion promoters, and fusible bonding yarns and granules. It serves automotive, electro and electronic, industry and consumer goods, optic, and packaging markets. The company was founded in 1936 and is based in Domat/Ems, Switzerland. EMS-CHEMIE HOLDING AG is a subsidiary of EMESTA HOLDING AG.

About Albemarle

Albemarle Corporation develops, manufactures, and markets engineered specialty chemicals worldwide. It operates through three segments: Energy Storage, Specialties and Ketjen. The Energy Storage segment offers lithium compounds, including lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, and lithium chloride; technical services for the handling and use of reactive lithium products; and lithium-containing by-products recycling services. The Specialties segment provides bromine-based specialty chemicals, including elemental bromine, alkyl and inorganic bromides, brominated powdered activated carbon, and other bromine fine chemicals; lithium specialties, such as butyllithium and lithium aluminum hydride; develops and manufactures cesium products for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries; and zirconium, barium, and titanium products for pyrotechnical applications that include airbag initiators. The Ketjen segment offers clean fuels technologies (CFT), which is composed of hydroprocessing catalysts (HPC) together with isomerization and akylation catalysts; fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) catalysts and additives; and performance catalyst solutions (PCS), which is composed of organometallics and curatives. The company serves the energy storage, petroleum refining, consumer electronics, construction, automotive, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, and crop protection markets. Albemarle Corporation was founded in 1887 and is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina.