Financial Comparison: Bloom Energy (BE) versus The Competition

Bloom Energy (NYSE:BE) is one of 21 public companies in the “Electrical industrial apparatus” industry, but how does it contrast to its peers? We will compare Bloom Energy to similar businesses based on the strength of its risk, profitability, earnings, valuation, dividends, institutional ownership and analyst recommendations.

Volatility & Risk

Bloom Energy has a beta of 3.27, indicating that its stock price is 227% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Bloom Energy’s peers have a beta of 1.49, indicating that their average stock price is 49% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

77.0% of Bloom Energy shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 53.1% of shares of all “Electrical industrial apparatus” companies are owned by institutional investors. 8.8% of Bloom Energy shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 10.7% of shares of all “Electrical industrial apparatus” companies are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for Bloom Energy and its peers, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Bloom Energy	1	11	8	1	2.43
Bloom Energy Competitors	92	599	840	35	2.52

Bloom Energy presently has a consensus target price of $25.06, suggesting a potential upside of 29.89%. As a group, “Electrical industrial apparatus” companies have a potential upside of 23.85%. Given Bloom Energy’s higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Bloom Energy is more favorable than its peers.

Profitability

This table compares Bloom Energy and its peers’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Bloom Energy	-10.29%	-20.32%	-3.94%
Bloom Energy Competitors	-211.08%	-93.75%	-17.25%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Bloom Energy and its peers gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Bloom Energy	$1.47 billion	-$302.12 million	-96.45
Bloom Energy Competitors	$534.72 million	-$136.01 million	-1.73

Bloom Energy has higher revenue, but lower earnings than its peers. Bloom Energy is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than its peers, indicating that it is currently more affordable than other companies in its industry.

Summary

Bloom Energy beats its peers on 8 of the 13 factors compared.

Bloom Energy Company Profile

Bloom Energy Corporation designs, manufactures, sells, and installs solid-oxide fuel cell systems for on-site power generation in the United States and internationally. The company offers Bloom Energy Server, a solid oxide technology that converts fuel, such as natural gas, biogas, hydrogen, or a blend of these fuels into electricity through an electrochemical process without combustion. It sells its products through direct and indirect sales channels to utilities, data centers, agriculture, retail, hospitals, higher education, biotech, and manufacturing industries. The company was formerly known as Ion America Corp. and changed its name to Bloom Energy Corporation in 2006. Bloom Energy Corporation was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.