AES (NYSE:AES) versus CleanSpark (NYSE:CLSK) Head-To-Head Comparison
AES (NYSE:AES) and CleanSpark (OTCMKTS:CLSK) are both utilities companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their risk, analyst recommendations, dividends, institutional ownership, valuation, earnings and profitability.
Dividends
AES pays an annual dividend of $0.55 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.4%. CleanSpark does not pay a dividend. AES pays out 44.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. AES has raised its dividend for 6 consecutive years.
Valuation & Earnings
This table compares AES and CleanSpark’s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| AES | $10.74 billion | 0.99 | $1.20 billion | $1.24 | 12.91 |
| CleanSpark | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
AES has higher revenue and earnings than CleanSpark.
Insider & Institutional Ownership
93.6% of AES shares are held by institutional investors. 1.1% of AES shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.
Analyst Ratings
This is a summary of current ratings and price targets for AES and CleanSpark, as reported by MarketBeat.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| AES | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2.50 |
| CleanSpark | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3.00 |
AES presently has a consensus target price of $17.86, suggesting a potential upside of 11.53%. CleanSpark has a consensus target price of $4.00, suggesting a potential upside of 663.36%. Given CleanSpark’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe CleanSpark is more favorable than AES.
Profitability
This table compares AES and CleanSpark’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| AES | 3.78% | 18.94% | 3.22% |
| CleanSpark | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Summary
AES beats CleanSpark on 9 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.
AES Company Profile
The AES Corporation operates as a diversified power generation and utility company. It owns and/or operates power plants to generate and sell power to customers, such as utilities, industrial users, and other intermediaries. The company also owns and/or operates utilities to generate or purchase, distribute, transmit, and sell electricity to end-user customers in the residential, commercial, industrial, and governmental sectors; and generates and sells electricity on the wholesale market. It uses a range of fuels to generate electricity, including natural gas, coal, pet coke, diesel, and oil, as well as renewables, such as hydro, solar, wind, energy storage, biomass, and landfill gas. The company owns and/or operates a generation portfolio of approximately 31,792 megawatts. It has operations in the United States, El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. The company was formerly known as Applied Energy Services, Inc. and changed its name to The AES Corporation in April 2000. The AES Corporation was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.
CleanSpark Company Profile
CleanSpark, Inc. provides energy software and control technology in the United States. The company offers an integrated distributed energy management control platform that provides energy generation with storage devices, as well as controls facility loads to provide energy security in real time to commercial, industrial, mining, defense, campus, and residential users. It also provides turnkey microgrid implementation services, microgid design and engineering, project development consulting, and solar photovoltaic installation and consulting. In addition, the company offers mPulse software suite, a modular platform that enables fine-grained control of a Microgrid; and microgrid value stream optimizer that provides a robust distributed energy and microgrid system modeling solution. Further, it converts various materials, including municipal solid waste, municipal sewage sludge, food and cooking waste, petroleum sludge and oily wastes, animal manures, cellulosic and non-cellulosic biomass, energy crops, scrap tires, and coal into SynGas. The company’s SynGas is used as clean, renewable, environmentally friendly, and warming fuel for power plants and motor vehicles; and as feedstock for the generation of di-methyl ether. The company was formerly known as Stratean Inc. and changed its name to CleanSpark, Inc. in November 2016. CleanSpark, Inc. was incorporated in 1987 and is based in Bountiful, Utah.
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