Critical Survey: SunocoCorp (NYSE:SUNC) & Texas Pacific Land (NYSE:TPL)

Texas Pacific Land (NYSE:TPL) and SunocoCorp (NYSE:SUNC) are both energy companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, risk, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, earnings, profitability and dividends.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for Texas Pacific Land and SunocoCorp, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Texas Pacific Land	1	2	1	0	2.00
SunocoCorp	1	1	3	1	2.67

Texas Pacific Land presently has a consensus price target of $639.00, suggesting a potential upside of 83.13%. SunocoCorp has a consensus price target of $81.00, suggesting a potential downside of 0.62%. Given Texas Pacific Land’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Texas Pacific Land is more favorable than SunocoCorp.

Dividends

Texas Pacific Land pays an annual dividend of $2.40 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.7%. SunocoCorp pays an annual dividend of $4.01 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.9%. Texas Pacific Land pays out 30.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. SunocoCorp pays out 138.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Texas Pacific Land has raised its dividend for 3 consecutive years.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Texas Pacific Land and SunocoCorp”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Texas Pacific Land	$798.19 million	30.15	$481.38 million	$7.85	44.45
SunocoCorp	$25.20 billion	0.17	-$5.00 million	$2.89	28.20

Texas Pacific Land has higher earnings, but lower revenue than SunocoCorp. SunocoCorp is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Texas Pacific Land, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

59.9% of Texas Pacific Land shares are held by institutional investors. 6.9% of Texas Pacific Land shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 5.9% of SunocoCorp shares are held by 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.

Profitability

This table compares Texas Pacific Land and SunocoCorp’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Texas Pacific Land	60.32%	35.76%	32.04%
SunocoCorp	N/A	N/A	N/A

Summary

Texas Pacific Land beats SunocoCorp on 12 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Texas Pacific Land

Texas Pacific Land Corporation engages in the land and resource management, and water services and operations businesses. The company owns a 1/128th nonparticipating perpetual oil and gas royalty interest (NPRI) under approximately 85,000 acres of land; a 1/16th NPRI under approximately 371,000 acres of land; and approximately 4,000 additional net royalty acres, total of approximately 195,000 NRA located in the western part of Texas. The Land and Resource Management segment manages surface acres of land, and oil and gas royalty interest in West Texas. This segment also engages in easements, such as transporting oil, gas and related hydrocarbons, power line and utility, and subsurface wellbore easements. In addition, this segment leases its land for processing, storage, and compression facilities and roads; and is involved in sale of materials, such as caliche, sand, and other material, as well as sells land. The Water Services and Operations segment provides full-service water offerings, including water sourcing, produced-water treatment, infrastructure development, and disposal solutions to operators in the Permian Basin. This segment also holds produced water royalties. Texas Pacific Land Corporation was founded in 1888 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.

About SunocoCorp

Sunoco LP is an energy infrastructure and fuel distribution master limited partnership. Sunoco LP is based in DALLAS.