Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF) versus Its Competitors Head-To-Head Survey

Cleveland-Cliffs (NYSE:CLF) is one of 1,984 publicly-traded companies in the “Metals & Mining” industry, but how does it compare to its peers? We will compare Cleveland-Cliffs to similar businesses based on the strength of its profitability, risk, dividends, institutional ownership, earnings, valuation and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations for Cleveland-Cliffs and its peers, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Cleveland-Cliffs	2	7	3	0	2.08
Cleveland-Cliffs Competitors	6401	22581	32279	1794	2.47

Cleveland-Cliffs currently has a consensus price target of $14.18, suggesting a potential downside of 0.74%. As a group, “Metals & Mining” companies have a potential upside of 35.36%. Given Cleveland-Cliffs’ peers stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Cleveland-Cliffs has less favorable growth aspects than its peers.

Profitability

This table compares Cleveland-Cliffs and its peers’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Cleveland-Cliffs	-2.36%	-6.83%	-2.05%
Cleveland-Cliffs Competitors	-1,168,050,136,845,918,000.00%	-53.09%	-2.11%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

67.7% of Cleveland-Cliffs shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 16.0% of shares of all “Metals & Mining” companies are held by institutional investors. 0.9% of Cleveland-Cliffs shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 17.6% of shares of all “Metals & Mining” companies are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Cleveland-Cliffs and its peers gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Cleveland-Cliffs	$18.61 billion	-$1.48 billion	-16.81
Cleveland-Cliffs Competitors	$5.09 billion	$279.69 million	-46.14

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

Risk & Volatility

Cleveland-Cliffs has a beta of 2.09, meaning that its stock price is 109% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Cleveland-Cliffs’ peers have a beta of 1.02, meaning that their average stock price is 2% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Cleveland-Cliffs beats its peers on 7 of the 13 factors compared.

About Cleveland-Cliffs

Cleveland-Cliffs is the largest flat-rolled steel company and the largest iron ore pellet producer in North America. The company is vertically integrated from mining through iron making, steelmaking, rolling, finishing and downstream with hot and cold stamping of steel parts and components. The company was formerly known as Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. and changed its name to Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. in August 2017. Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. was founded in 1847 and is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.