Contrasting Petrofac (OTCMKTS:POFCY) & Nine Energy Service (NYSE:NINE)

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent recommendations and price targets for Nine Energy Service and Petrofac, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

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

Profitability

This table compares Nine Energy Service and Petrofac’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Nine Energy Service	-7.17%	N/A	-11.52%
Petrofac	N/A	N/A	N/A

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Nine Energy Service and Petrofac”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Nine Energy Service	$571.17 million	0.04	-$41.08 million	($1.00)	-0.59
Petrofac	$2.50 billion	0.00	-$505.00 million	N/A	N/A

Nine Energy Service has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Petrofac.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

57.6% of Nine Energy Service shares are owned by institutional investors. 4.1% of Nine Energy Service shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility & Risk

Nine Energy Service has a beta of 2.22, indicating that its share price is 122% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Petrofac has a beta of 2.99, indicating that its share price is 199% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Nine Energy Service beats Petrofac on 5 of the 9 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 Petrofac

Petrofac Limited designs, builds, manages, and maintains infrastructure for the energy industries in the United Kingdom, Algeria, Thailand, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Engineering & Construction (E&C); Asset Solutions; and Integrated Energy Services (IES). The E&C segment provides onshore and offshore engineering, procurement, construction, installation, and commissioning services. The Asset Solutions segment offers concept, feasibility, and front-end engineering design services, as well as manages and maintains onshore and offshore operations. The IES segment focuses on delivering value from the existing asset portfolio. The company was founded in 1981 and is based in St Helier, Jersey.