KNOT Offshore Partners (NYSE:KNOP) and CVR Energy (NYSE:CVI) Critical Contrast

KNOT Offshore Partners (NYSE:KNOP) and CVR Energy (NYSE:CVI) are both energy companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, risk, analyst recommendations, dividends, valuation, earnings and profitability.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

26.8% of KNOT Offshore Partners shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 98.9% of CVR Energy shares are owned by institutional investors. 70.8% of CVR Energy shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Volatility & Risk

KNOT Offshore Partners has a beta of -0.02, meaning that its stock price is 102% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, CVR Energy has a beta of 0.9, meaning that its stock price is 10% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings and price targets for KNOT Offshore Partners and CVR Energy, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
KNOT Offshore Partners	0	3	1	1	2.60
CVR Energy	4	4	0	0	1.50

KNOT Offshore Partners presently has a consensus target price of $14.00, suggesting a potential upside of 36.24%. CVR Energy has a consensus target price of $45.75, suggesting a potential downside of 21.13%. Given KNOT Offshore Partners’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, research analysts clearly believe KNOT Offshore Partners is more favorable than CVR Energy.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares KNOT Offshore Partners and CVR Energy”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
KNOT Offshore Partners	$364.44 million	0.95	$22.96 million	$0.44	23.35
CVR Energy	$7.16 billion	0.81	$27.00 million	$0.68	85.30

CVR Energy has higher revenue and earnings than KNOT Offshore Partners. KNOT Offshore Partners is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than CVR Energy, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares KNOT Offshore Partners and CVR Energy’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
KNOT Offshore Partners	3.90%	5.73%	1.84%
CVR Energy	0.81%	-15.21%	-3.33%

Dividends

KNOT Offshore Partners pays an annual dividend of $0.30 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.9%. CVR Energy pays an annual dividend of $0.40 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.7%. KNOT Offshore Partners pays out 68.2% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. CVR Energy pays out 58.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years. CVR Energy has increased its dividend for 1 consecutive years.

About KNOT Offshore Partners

KNOT Offshore Partners LP acquires, owns, and operates shuttle tankers under long-term charters in the North Sea and Brazil. The company provides loading, transportation, and discharge of crude oil under time charters and bareboat charters. The company was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Aberdeen, the United Kingdom.

About CVR Energy

CVR Energy, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the petroleum refining and marketing, and nitrogen fertilizer manufacturing activities in the United States. It operates in two segments, Petroleum and Nitrogen Fertilizer. The Petroleum segment refines and supplies gasoline, crude oil, distillate, diesel fuel, and other refined products. This segment also owns and operates a coking medium-sour crude oil refinery in southeast Kansas; and a crude oil refinery in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, as well as supporting logistics assets. This segment primarily serves retailers, railroads, farm cooperatives, and other refiners/marketers. The Nitrogen Fertilizer segment owns and operates a nitrogen fertilizer plant in North America that utilizes a pet coke gasification process to produce nitrogen fertilizer products; and a nitrogen fertilizer facility in East Dubuque, Illinois that produces nitrogen fertilizers in the form of ammonia and urea ammonium nitrate (UAN), nitric acid, and liquid and granulated urea. This segment primarily markets UAN products to agricultural customers; and ammonia products to agricultural and industrial customers. The company was founded in 1906 and is based in Sugar Land, Texas. CVR Energy, Inc. is a subsidiary of Icahn Enterprises L.P.