Reviewing Atkore (NYSE:ATKR) & Thermon Group (NYSE:THR)

Atkore (NYSE:ATKR) and Thermon Group (NYSE:THR) are both mid-cap industrials companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, risk, earnings, dividends, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership and valuation.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for Atkore and Thermon Group, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Atkore	1	4	0	1	2.17
Thermon Group	0	6	0	0	2.00

Atkore presently has a consensus price target of $143.33, suggesting a potential upside of 51.12%. Thermon Group has a consensus price target of $57.00, suggesting a potential downside of 6.77%. Given Atkore’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, research analysts plainly believe Atkore is more favorable than Thermon Group.

Volatility and Risk

Atkore has a beta of 1.69, suggesting that its stock price is 69% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Thermon Group has a beta of 0.83, suggesting that its stock price is 17% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Atkore and Thermon Group’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Atkore	-5.55%	10.27%	4.90%
Thermon Group	8.31%	13.42%	8.84%

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Atkore and Thermon Group”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Atkore	$2.85 billion	1.12	-$15.18 million	($4.81)	-19.72
Thermon Group	$536.26 million	3.76	$44.57 million	$1.34	45.63

Thermon Group has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Atkore. Atkore is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Thermon Group, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

99.8% of Thermon Group shares are held by institutional investors. 2.1% of Atkore shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.5% of Thermon Group shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Thermon Group beats Atkore on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Atkore

Atkore Inc. engages in the manufacture and sale of electrical, mechanical, safety, and infrastructure products and solutions in the United States and internationally. The company offers conduits, cables, and installation accessories. It also designs and manufactures protection and reliability solutions for critical infrastructure, such as metal framing, mechanical pipe, perimeter security, and cable management. The company offers its products under the Allied Tube & Conduit, AFC Cable Systems, Kaf-Tech, Heritage Plastics, Unistrut, Power-Strut, Cope, US Tray, FRE Composites, United Poly Systems, Calbond, and Calpipe. It serves various end markets, including new construction; maintenance, repair, and remodel; infrastructure; diversified industrials; alternative power generation; healthcare; data centers; and governments through electrical, industrial, and mechanical contractors, as well as original equipment manufacturers. The company was formerly known as Atkore International Group Inc. and changed its name to Atkore Inc. in February 2021. Atkore Inc. was founded in 1959 and is headquartered in Harvey, Illinois.

About Thermon Group

Thermon Group Holdings, Inc. provides engineered industrial process heating solutions for process industries in the United States and Latin America, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. It offers heat tracing products, such as electric heat tracing cables, steam heating solutions, controls, monitoring and software, instrumentation, project services, industrial heating and filtration solutions, temporary electrical power distribution and lighting, and other products and services. The company also provides controls, monitoring, and software systems for the control and management of a heat trace system; environmental heating solutions under the Ruffneck, Norsemen, and Catadyne brands; process heating solutions under the Caloritech brand name; filtration solutions under the 3L Filters brand; rail and transit solutions under the Hellfire, Velocity, ArcticSense, and other brand names; and boilers under the Vapor Power, Precision Boilers, and Caloritech brands. In addition, it offers project services; transportation heating products, including track and switch heaters, accessories, control panels, rail heaters, gas blower accessories, and air curtains; transit heaters; and velocity heat products. Further, the company offers temporary power solutions; heating systems, such as engineered electric heat, explosion proof gas catalytic heaters, heaters for harshest environments, methane abatement, and engineered filtration system; electrically, steam, and fluid heated tubing bundles; and pre-insulated tubing and system accessories tubing bundles. It serves chemical and petrochemical, oil and gas, power generation, rail and transit, commercial, energy transition/decarbonization, mining and mineral processing, maritime/shipbuilding, semiconductors, pharmaceutical and biotechnology, food and beverage, data centers, and renewables industries through a network of sales and service professionals, and distributors. Thermon Group Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1954 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.