Financial Survey: BT Brands (NASDAQ:BTBD) versus Portillo’s (NASDAQ:PTLO)

Portillo’s (NASDAQ:PTLO) and BT Brands (NASDAQ:BTBD) are both small-cap consumer discretionary companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, analyst recommendations, earnings, institutional ownership, dividends, valuation and risk.

Volatility & Risk

Portillo’s has a beta of 1.56, indicating that its stock price is 56% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, BT Brands has a beta of 0.55, indicating that its stock price is 45% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Portillo’s and BT Brands’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Portillo’s	1.85%	2.78%	0.86%
BT Brands	-4.57%	-8.99%	-5.45%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

98.3% of Portillo’s shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 0.4% of BT Brands shares are held by institutional investors. 6.3% of Portillo’s shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 19.6% of BT Brands shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent recommendations for Portillo’s and BT Brands, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Portillo’s	1	10	2	0	2.08
BT Brands	1	0	0	0	1.00

Portillo’s currently has a consensus target price of $5.92, suggesting a potential upside of 53.50%. Given Portillo’s’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts clearly believe Portillo’s is more favorable than BT Brands.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Portillo’s and BT Brands”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Portillo’s	$732.07 million	0.40	$19.34 million	$0.18	21.44
BT Brands	$13.49 million	0.79	-$690,000.00	($0.09)	-19.11

Portillo’s has higher revenue and earnings than BT Brands. BT Brands is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Portillo’s, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Portillo’s beats BT Brands on 12 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Portillo’s

Portillo’s Inc. owns and operates fast casual restaurants in the United States. The company offers Chicago-style hot dogs and sausages, Italian beef sandwiches, char-grilled burgers, chopped salads, crinkle-cut French fries, homemade chocolate cakes, and chocolate cake shake. It offers its products through its website, application, and certain third-party platforms. Portillo’s Inc. was founded in 1963 and is based in Oak Brook, Illinois.

About BT Brands

BT Brands, Inc. owns and operates fast-food restaurants in the north central region of United States. The company operates Burger Time restaurants located in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota; and a Dairy Queen franchise in Ham Lake, Minnesota. Its Burger Time restaurants provide various burgers and other food products, such as chicken sandwiches, pulled pork sandwiches, chicken chunks, side dishes, and soft drinks; and Dairy Queen restaurant offers burgers, chicken, sides, ice cream and other desserts, and various beverages. The company was founded in 1987 and is based in West Fargo, North Dakota.