Comparing NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) & AstroNova (NASDAQ:ALOT)

AstroNova (NASDAQ:ALOT) and NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) are both technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their risk, institutional ownership, profitability, earnings, dividends, valuation and analyst recommendations.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares AstroNova and NetApp”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
AstroNova	$152.17 million	1.49	-$2.38 million	($0.18)	-161.06
NetApp	$6.92 billion	6.42	$1.28 billion	$7.09	31.91

NetApp has higher revenue and earnings than AstroNova. AstroNova is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than NetApp, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for AstroNova and NetApp, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
AstroNova	1	0	0	0	1.00
NetApp	0	10	7	1	2.50

NetApp has a consensus price target of $199.20, indicating a potential downside of 11.96%. Given NetApp’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe NetApp is more favorable than AstroNova.

Profitability

This table compares AstroNova and NetApp’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
AstroNova	-0.88%	2.94%	1.61%
NetApp	19.18%	119.13%	14.39%

Institutional & Insider Ownership

43.0% of AstroNova shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 92.2% of NetApp shares are owned by institutional investors. 12.6% of AstroNova shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.4% of NetApp shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk and Volatility

AstroNova has a beta of 0.85, suggesting that its share price is 15% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, NetApp has a beta of 1.46, suggesting that its share price is 46% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Dividends

AstroNova pays an annual dividend of $0.28 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.0%. NetApp pays an annual dividend of $2.08 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.9%. AstroNova pays out -155.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. NetApp pays out 29.3% 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. NetApp has increased its dividend for 1 consecutive years. AstroNova is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Summary

NetApp beats AstroNova on 15 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About AstroNova

AstroNova, Inc. designs, develops, manufactures, and distributes specialty printers, and data acquisition and analysis systems in the United States, Europe, Asia, Canada, Central and South America, and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Product Identification (PI) and Test & Measurement (T&M). The PI segment offers tabletop and production-ready digital color label printers, and OEM printing systems under the QuickLabel brand; digital color label mini-presses and inline printing systems under the TrojanLabel brand; and label materials, tags material, inks, toners, and thermal transfer ribbions under the GetLabels brand. This segment also develops and licenses various specialized software programs to design and manage labels and print images; and provides training and support. This segment serves chemicals, cosmetics, food and beverage, medical products, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, and other industries; and brand owners, label converters, commercial printers, and packaging manufacturers. The T&M segment offers airborne printing solutions, such as ToughWriter used to print hard copies of navigation maps, arrival and departure information, flight itineraries, weather maps, performance data, passenger data, and various air traffic control data; ToughSwitch, an ethernet switches used to connect multiple computers or Ethernet devices; TMX data acquisition systems; Daxus DXS-100 distributed data acquisition platform; SmartCorder DDX100 portable data acquisition systems for facility and field testing; and Everest EV-5000, a digital strip chart recording system used primarily in aerospace and defense. This segment serves aerospace and aerospace and defense, automotive, commercial airline, energy, manufacturing, and transportation industries. The company was formerly known as Astro-Med, Inc. and changed its name to AstroNova, Inc. in May 2016. AstroNova, Inc. was incorporated in 1969 and is headquartered in West Warwick, Rhode Island.

About NetApp

NetApp, Inc. provides cloud-led and data-centric services to manage and share data on-premises, and private and public clouds worldwide. It operates in two segments, Hybrid Cloud and Public Could. The company offers intelligent data management software, such as NetApp ONTAP, NetApp Snapshot, NetApp SnapCenter Backup Management, NetApp SnapMirror Data Replication, NetApp SnapLock Data Compliance, and storage infrastructure solutions, including NetApp All-Flash FAS series, NetApp Fabric Attached Storage, NetApp E/EF series, and NetApp StorageGRID. In addition, it provides cloud storage and data services comprising NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, Azure NetApp Files, Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud, and cloud operations services, such as NetApp Cloud Insights, Spot by NetApp, and Instaclustr. Further, the company offers application-aware data management service under the NetApp Astra name; and professional and support services, such as strategic consulting, professional, managed, and support services. Additionally, it provides assessment, design, implementation, and migration services. The company serves the energy, financial service, government, technology, internet, life science, healthcare service, manufacturing, media, entertainment, animation, video postproduction, and markets through a direct sales force and an ecosystem of partners. NetApp, Inc. was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.