Plains All American Pipeline (NASDAQ:PAA) and OPAL Fuels (NASDAQ:OPAL) Critical Comparison

OPAL Fuels (NASDAQ:OPAL) and Plains All American Pipeline (NASDAQ:PAA) are both energy companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, dividends, institutional ownership, earnings, analyst recommendations, valuation and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for OPAL Fuels and Plains All American Pipeline, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
OPAL Fuels	2	1	0	0	1.33
Plains All American Pipeline	2	7	8	1	2.44

OPAL Fuels currently has a consensus price target of $2.40, suggesting a potential upside of 52.87%. Plains All American Pipeline has a consensus price target of $25.80, suggesting a potential upside of 2.58%. Given OPAL Fuels’ higher possible upside, research analysts plainly believe OPAL Fuels is more favorable than Plains All American Pipeline.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares OPAL Fuels and Plains All American Pipeline”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
OPAL Fuels	$339.89 million	0.81	$14.75 million	($0.01)	-157.00
Plains All American Pipeline	$44.26 billion	0.40	$1.44 billion	$3.61	6.97

Plains All American Pipeline has higher revenue and earnings than OPAL Fuels. OPAL Fuels is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Plains All American Pipeline, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares OPAL Fuels and Plains All American Pipeline’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
OPAL Fuels	0.65%	15.54%	0.22%
Plains All American Pipeline	5.29%	12.13%	4.59%

Volatility and Risk

OPAL Fuels has a beta of 0.79, indicating that its share price is 21% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Plains All American Pipeline has a beta of 0.57, indicating that its share price is 43% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

12.2% of OPAL Fuels shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 41.8% of Plains All American Pipeline shares are held by institutional investors. 85.7% of OPAL Fuels shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 1.1% of Plains All American Pipeline shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Plains All American Pipeline beats OPAL Fuels on 10 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About OPAL Fuels

OPAL Fuels Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the production and distribution of renewable natural gas for use as a vehicle fuel for heavy and medium-duty trucking fleets. It also designs, develops, constructs, operates, and services fueling stations for trucking fleets that use natural gas to displace diesel as transportation fuel. In addition, it offers design, development, and construction services for hydrogen fueling stations. Further, the company engages in the generation and sale of renewable power to utilities. OPAL Fuels Inc. is based in White Plains, New York.

About Plains All American Pipeline

Plains All American Pipeline, L.P., through its subsidiaries, engages in the pipeline transportation, terminalling, storage, and gathering of crude oil and natural gas liquids (NGL) in the United States and Canada. The company operates in two segments, Crude Oil and NGL. The Crude Oil segment offers gathering and transporting crude oil through pipelines, gathering systems, trucks, and at times on barges or railcars. This segment provides terminalling, storage, and other facilities-related services, as well as merchant activities. As of December 31, 2021, this segment owned and leased 18,300 miles of active crude oil transportation pipelines and gathering systems, as well as an additional 110 miles of pipelines that supports crude oil storage and terminalling facilities; 74 million barrels of commercial crude oil storage capacity; 38 million barrels of active, above-ground tank capacity; four marine facilities; a condensate processing facility; seven crude oil rail terminals and 2,100 crude oil railcars; and 640 trucks and 1,275 trailers. The Natural Gas Liquids segment engages in the natural gas processing, NGL fractionation, storage, transportation, and terminalling activities. As of December 31, 2021, this segment owned and operated four natural gas processing plants; nine fractionation plants; 28 million barrels of NGL storage capacity; approximately 1,620 miles of active NGL transportation pipelines, as well as an additional 55 miles of pipeline that supports NGL storage facilities; 16 NGL rail terminals and approximately 3,900 NGL rail cars; and approximately 220 trailers. The company was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.