Head to Head Review: Linde (NASDAQ:LIN) & Orbia Advance (OTCMKTS:MXCHY)

Linde (NASDAQ:LIN) and Orbia Advance (OTCMKTS:MXCHY) are both basic materials companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, profitability, analyst recommendations, earnings, risk, valuation and dividends.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current recommendations and price targets for Linde and Orbia Advance, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Linde	0	2	8	2	3.00
Orbia Advance	0	0	2	0	3.00

Linde presently has a consensus target price of $520.00, suggesting a potential upside of 15.33%. Given Linde’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Linde is more favorable than Orbia Advance.

Risk & Volatility

Linde has a beta of 0.93, indicating that its stock price is 7% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Orbia Advance has a beta of 0.7, indicating that its stock price is 30% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

82.8% of Linde shares are held by institutional investors. 0.7% of Linde shares are held 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.

Dividends

Linde pays an annual dividend of $6.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.3%. Orbia Advance pays an annual dividend of $0.03 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.6%. Linde pays out 42.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Linde has increased its dividend for 5 consecutive years.

Profitability

This table compares Linde and Orbia Advance’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Linde	20.20%	19.09%	9.19%
Orbia Advance	2.21%	7.87%	2.14%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Linde and Orbia Advance”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Linde	$33.01 billion	6.41	$6.57 billion	$14.06	32.07
Orbia Advance	$7.51 billion	0.25	$145.00 million	N/A	N/A

Linde has higher revenue and earnings than Orbia Advance.

Summary

Linde beats Orbia Advance on 13 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Linde

Linde plc operates as an industrial gas company in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South Pacific. It offers atmospheric gases, including oxygen, nitrogen, argon, and rare gases; and process gases, such as carbon dioxide, helium, hydrogen, electronic gases, specialty gases, and acetylene. The company also designs and constructs turnkey process plants for third-party customers, as well as for the gas businesses in various locations, such as air separation, hydrogen, synthesis, olefin, and natural gas plants. It serves a range of industries, including healthcare, chemicals and energy, manufacturing, metals and mining, food and beverage, and electronics. The company was founded in 1879 and is based in Woking, the United Kingdom.

About Orbia Advance

Orbia Advance Corporation, S.A.B. de C.V. provides products and solutions for precision agriculture, building and infrastructure, fluorinated, polymer, and connectivity sectors worldwide. The company offers irrigation systems, agricultural and greenhouse projects, digital farming technologies, and related services; and connectivity solutions, including conduits, cable-in conduit, and other HDPE products and solutions. It also provides water delivering solutions for drinking water supply, sanitation, and urban water resilience; fluorine and downstream products, comprising fluorspar mine and produces intermediates, refrigerants, and propellants for used in automotive, infrastructure, semiconductor, health, medicine, climate control, food cold chain, energy storage, computing, and telecommunications applications; and general and specialty resins, PVC, and compounds and additives for stabilizers and plasticizers, as well as compounds formulated from polyolefin, thermoplastic polyurethane, and thermoplastic elastomer polymers for various applications. The company was formerly known as Mexichem, S.A.B. de C.V. and changed its name to Orbia Advance Corporation, S.A.B. de C.V. in August 2019. Orbia Advance Corporation, S.A.B. de C.V. was founded in 1953 and is headquartered in Mexico City, Mexico.