Critical Review: Spruce Power (NYSE:SPRU) and Hoya (OTCMKTS:HOCPY)

Hoya (OTCMKTS:HOCPY) and Spruce Power (NYSE:SPRU) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, institutional ownership, valuation, earnings, analyst recommendations, profitability and risk.

Profitability

This table compares Hoya and Spruce Power’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Hoya	23.33%	21.01%	16.56%
Spruce Power	-23.23%	-18.82%	-2.86%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings for Hoya and Spruce Power, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Hoya	0	0	0	3	4.00
Spruce Power	1	0	0	0	1.00

Institutional & Insider Ownership

0.1% of Hoya shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 20.8% of Spruce Power shares are held by institutional investors. 12.7% of Spruce Power shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Hoya and Spruce Power”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Hoya	$5.69 billion	9.14	$1.35 billion	$4.08	37.13
Spruce Power	$82.11 million	1.12	-$70.49 million	($1.38)	-3.67

Hoya has higher revenue and earnings than Spruce Power. Spruce Power is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Hoya, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Risk & Volatility

Hoya has a beta of 1.01, meaning that its share price is 1% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Spruce Power has a beta of 1.26, meaning that its share price is 26% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Hoya beats Spruce Power on 10 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Hoya

HOYA Corporation, a med-tech company, provides high-tech and medical products worldwide. It operates through three segments: Life Care, Telecommunication, and Other. The company offers life care products, including eyeglass and contact lenses; medical endoscopes; intraocular lenses; laparoscopic surgical instruments; automatic endoscope cleaning equipment; and other medical related products, such as prosthetic ceramic fillers and metallic implants for orthopedics. It also operates Eyecity, a specialty retailer of contact lenses. In addition, the company provides information technology products, such as mask blanks and photomasks for manufacturing semiconductor chips; glass disks for hard disk drives; and imaging products that include optical glasses/optical lenses, colored glass filters, and laser equipment/UV light resources. Further, it engages in the research, development, manufacture, and sale of photomasks for manufacturing flat panel displays. Additionally, the company offers ReadSpeaker, a speech synthesis software; and cloud services comprising Kinnosuke, a time and attendance management service, as well as Yonosuke, an electronic payslip service. HOYA Corporation was founded in 1941 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

About Spruce Power

Spruce Power Holding Corporation owns and operates distributed solar energy assets in the United States. The company provides subscription-based services for homeowners and businesses to own and maintain rooftop solar and battery storage. It offers its subscription-based services to approximately 75,000 customers. The company is headquartered in Denver, Colorado.