Comparing Gencor Industries (NASDAQ:GENC) & Wabash National (NYSE:WNC)

Gencor Industries (NASDAQ:GENC) and Wabash National (NYSE:WNC) are both small-cap industrials companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, valuation, earnings, profitability, risk, analyst recommendations and dividends.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings for Gencor Industries and Wabash National, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Gencor Industries	0	1	1	1	3.00
Wabash National	1	1	2	0	2.25

Gencor Industries currently has a consensus target price of $19.30, suggesting a potential upside of 9.19%. Wabash National has a consensus target price of $21.67, suggesting a potential upside of 53.74%. Given Wabash National’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Wabash National is more favorable than Gencor Industries.

Profitability

This table compares Gencor Industries and Wabash National’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Gencor Industries	14.33%	8.60%	8.01%
Wabash National	-5.48%	-36.59%	-10.27%

Institutional & Insider Ownership

97.0% of Wabash National shares are held by institutional investors. 30.4% of Gencor Industries shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 2.8% of Wabash National shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Risk & Volatility

Gencor Industries has a beta of 0.54, suggesting that its stock price is 46% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Wabash National has a beta of 1.48, suggesting that its stock price is 48% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Gencor Industries and Wabash National”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Gencor Industries	$110.01 million	2.36	$14.67 million	$1.16	15.24
Wabash National	$1.54 billion	0.37	$211.45 million	($1.93)	-7.30

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

Summary

Gencor Industries beats Wabash National on 9 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Gencor Industries

Gencor Industries, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, and sells heavy machinery used in the production of highway construction materials and environmental control equipment. It offers hot-mix asphalt plants to produce asphalt paving materials; related asphalt plant equipment, including hot-mix storage silos, fabric filtration systems, cold feed bins, and other plant components; and a range of mobile batch plants. The company also provides combustion systems that transform solid, liquid, or gaseous fuels into usable energy, or burn multiple fuels in asphalt and aggregate drying industries; and combustion systems for rotary dryers, kilns, fume and liquid incinerators, and fuel heaters, as well as industrial incinerators. In addition, it offers thermal fluid heat transfer systems that transfer heat for storage, heating, and pumping viscous materials, such as asphalt, chemicals, heavy oils, etc. in various industrial and petrochemical applications; specialty storage tanks for various industrial uses; and asphalt pavers under the Blaw-Knox brand. The company sells its products primarily to the highway construction industry through its sales representatives, and independent dealers and agents worldwide. The company was formerly known as Mechtron International Corporation and changed its name to Gencor Industries, Inc. in 1987. Gencor Industries, Inc. was founded in 1894 and is based in Orlando, Florida.

About Wabash National

Wabash National Corporation provides connected solutions for the transportation, logistics, and distribution industries primarily in the United States. The company operates through two segments, Transportation Solutions and Parts & Services. The Transportation Solutions segment designs and manufactures transportation-related equipment and products dry and refrigerated van trailers, platform trailers, tank trailers, and truck-mounted tanks; truck bodies for dry-freight transportation; cargo and cargo XL bodies for commercial applications; refrigerated truck bodies; platform truck bodies; and used trailers, as well as laminated hardwood oak flooring products. The Parts & Services segment provides aftermarket parts and services; steel flatbed bodies, truck body mounting, shelving for package delivery, partitions, roof racks, hitches, liftgates, thermal solutions, and others; truck body repair parts; and door repair and replacement, collision repair, and basic maintenance services. It also develops and scales a digital marketplace for the transportation and logistics distribution industry; operates a parts and services distribution platform; and stainless steel storage tanks and silos, mixers, and processors for the dairy, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, chemical, craft brewing, and biotech markets; trailers as a service; and composite products, including truck bodies, overhead doors, and other industrial application products, as well as used trailers. The company offers its products under the Wabash, DuraPlate, DuraPlateHD, DuraPlate AeroSkirt, and AeroSkirt CX brands, as well as EcoNex brand. It serves its products to truckload common carriers, leasing companies, private fleet carriers, less-than-truckload common carriers, and package carriers. Wabash National Corporation was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Lafayette, Indiana.