Sifting through countless of stocks in the Chemicals industry can be tedious, and sometimes two stocks are just too similar to judge which is the better investment. If you’re on the fence about investing in Ashland Inc., Hawkins or Inc. because you’re not sure how they measure up, it’s important to compare them on a few factors before making your decision.

Read on to learn how Ashland Inc., Hawkins and Inc. compare based on key financial metrics to determine which better meets your investment needs.

About Ashland Inc., Hawkins and Inc.

Ashland Inc. provides additives and specialty ingredients in the North and Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and internationally. It operates through Life Sciences, Personal Care, Specialty Additives, and Intermediates segments. The Life Sciences segment offers pharmaceutical solutions, including controlled release polymers, disintegrants, tablet coatings, thickeners, solubilizers, and tablet binders; and nutrition solutions, such as thickeners, stabilizers, emulsifiers, and additives; agricultural chemicals; diagnostic films; and fine chemicals. Its Personal Care segment provides a range of natural, nature-derived, biodegradable, and performance ingredients; solutions for toothpastes, mouth washes and rinses, denture cleaning, and care for teeth; and household supplies nature-derived rheology ingredients, biodegradable surface wetting agents, performance encapsulates, and specialty polymers. The Specialty Additives segment offers rheology modifiers, foam control agents, surfactants and wetting agents, pH neutralizers, advanced ceramics used in catalytic converters, environmental filters, ingredients for the manufacturing of ceramic capacitors, plasma display panels and solar cells, ingredients for textile printing, thermoplastic metals, and alloys for welding. Its Intermediates segment produces 1,4 butanediol and related derivatives, including n-methylpyrrolidone. It offers its products to customers in a range of consumer and industrial markets, such as architectural coatings, construction, energy, food and beverage, personal care, and pharmaceutical. The company was formerly known as Ashland Global Holdings Inc. and changed its name to Ashland Inc. in August 2022. Ashland Inc. was founded in 1924 and is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware.

Hawkins, Inc. operates as a water treatment and specialty ingredients company in the United States. The company operates through three segments: Water Treatment, Industrial, and Health and Nutrition. The Water Treatment segment provides chemicals, products, equipment, services, and solutions for potable water, municipal and industrial wastewater, industrial process water, non-residential swimming pool water, and agriculture water. The Industrial segment offers industrial chemicals, products, and services to agriculture, chemical processing, electronics, energy, food, pharmaceutical, and plating industries. This segment manufactures sodium hypochlorite and agricultural products, as well as various food-grade and pharmaceutical products, such as liquid phosphates, lactates, other blended products, and agricultural products; and receives, stores, and distributes various chemicals comprising liquid caustic soda, sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, urea, phosphoric acid, aqua ammonia, and potassium hydroxide. It also repackages water treatment chemicals and bulk industrial chemicals; and performs custom blending of chemicals. The Health and Nutrition segment offers ingredient distribution, processing, and formulation solutions to manufacturers of nutraceutical, functional food and beverage, personal care, dietary supplement and other nutritional food, and health and wellness products. This segment offers minerals, vitamins and amino acids, excipients, joint products, botanicals and herbs, sweeteners, and enzymes. Hawkins, Inc. was founded in 1938 and is headquartered in Roseville, Minnesota.

Latest Chemicals and Ashland Inc., Hawkins, Inc. Stock News

As of December 2, 2025, Ashland Inc. had a $2.6 billion market capitalization, compared to the Chemicals median of $3.1 million. Ashland Inc.’s stock is NA in 2025, NA in the previous five trading days and down 26.59% in the past year.

Currently, Ashland Inc. does not have a price-earnings ratio. Ashland Inc.’s trailing 12-month revenue is $1.8 billion with a -46.3% net profit margin. Year-over-year quarterly sales growth most recently was -8.6%. Analysts expect adjusted earnings to reach $3.994 per share for the current fiscal year. Ashland Inc. currently has a 2.9% dividend yield.

Currently, Hawkins, Inc.’s price-earnings ratio is 33.2. Hawkins, Inc.’s trailing 12-month revenue is $1.0 billion with a 8.0% net profit margin. Year-over-year quarterly sales growth most recently was 13.5%. Analysts expect adjusted earnings to reach $3.985 per share for the current fiscal year. Hawkins, Inc. currently has a 0.6% dividend yield.

How We Compare Ashland Inc., Hawkins and Inc. Stock Grades

Stock evaluation requires access to huge amounts of data and the knowledge and time to sift through it all, make sense of financial ratios, read income statements and analyze recent stock movements. AAII created A+ Investor, a robust data suite that condenses data research in an actionable and customizable way suitable for investors of all knowledge levels, to help investors streamline and work through such data.

AAII’s proprietary stock grades come with A+ Investor. These offer intuitive A‐F grades for each of five key investing factors: value, growth, momentum, earnings estimate revisions and quality. Here, we’ll take a closer look at Ashland Inc., Hawkins and Inc.’s stock grades to see how they measure up against one another.

Learn more about A+ Investor here!

Sign Up to Receive a Free Special Report Showing How A+ Grades Can Help You Make Smarter Investment Decisions

Ashland Inc., Hawkins and Inc. Stock Value Grades

Company	Ticker	Value
Ashland Inc.	ASH	B
Hawkins, Inc.	HWKN	D

Successful stock investing involves buying low and selling high, so stock valuation is an important consideration for stock selection.

Buying stocks that are going to go up typically means buying stocks that are undervalued in the first place, although momentum investors may argue that point.

AAII’s A+ Investor Value Grade derives from a stock’s value score. The Value Score is the percentile rank of the average of the percentile ranks of the price-to-sales ratio, price-earnings ratio, enterprise-value-to-EBITDA (EV/EBITDA) ratio, shareholder yield, price-to-book-value ratio and price-to-free-cash-flow ratio. The score is variable, meaning it can consider all six ratios or, should any of the six ratios not be valid, the remaining ratios that are valid. To be assigned a Value Score, stocks must have a valid (non-null) ratio and corresponding ranking for at least two of the six valuation ratios.

Stocks with a Value Score from 81 to 100 are considered deep value, those with a score between 61 and 80 are a good value and so on.

Ashland Inc. has a Value Score of 70, which is Value. Hawkins, Inc. has a Value Score of 22, which is Expensive.

The Value Stock Winner: Ashland Inc.

As you can clearly see from the Value Grade breakdown above, Ashland Inc. is considered to have better value than Hawkins, Inc.. For investors who focus solely on a company’s valuation, Ashland Inc. could be a good stock to add to their portfolio. However, it’s important for investors to analyze multiple factors based on a wide range of metrics before deciding whether to buy.

Ashland Inc., Hawkins and Inc. Growth Grades

Company	Ticker	Growth
Ashland Inc.	ASH	F
Hawkins, Inc.	HWKN	A

The foundation of growth investing is seeking out stocks of companies exhibiting strong, consistent and prolonged growth that is expected to continue into the future.

In order to compute the growth score and assign it a letter grade, the percentile ranks for each of three components‐consistency of annual sales growth, five-year sales growth rankings adjusted for extreme levels, and consistency of positive annual cash from operations‐must be determined. These three rank figures are added together, and the sum is ranked against the entire stock universe to arrive at a company’s Growth Score to create an equal distribution of grades.

The companies in the bottom 20% of the stock universe receive Growth Grades of F, considered to be very weak, while those in the top 20% receive A grades, which are considered very strong.

Ashland Inc. has a Growth Score of 9, which is Very Weak. Hawkins, Inc. has a Growth Score of 87, which is Very Strong.

The Growth Grade Winner: Hawkins, Inc.

As you can clearly see from the Growth Grade breakdown above, Hawkins, Inc. has a more attractive growth grade than Ashland Inc.. For investors who focus solely on how a company is growing relative to other companies in the same industry, Hawkins, Inc. could be a good stock to add to their portfolio. However, it’s important for investors to analyze multiple factors based on a wide range of metrics before deciding whether to buy.

Ashland Inc., Hawkins and Inc.’s Quality Grades

Company	Ticker	Quality
Ashland Inc.	ASH	B
Hawkins, Inc.	HWKN	B

Like the Value Grade, AAII’s A+ Investor Quality Grade comes from the percentile rank of key metrics. Specifically, the Quality Score is the percentile rank of the average of the percentile ranks of return on assets (ROA), return on invested capital (ROIC), gross profit relative to assets, buyback yield, change in total liabilities to assets, accruals, Z double prime bankruptcy risk (Z) score and the F-Score.

The score is variable, meaning it can consider all eight measures or, should any of the eight measures not be valid, the remaining measures that are valid. To be assigned a Quality Score, stocks must have a valid (non-null) measure and corresponding ranking for at least four of the eight quality measures.

The Quality Score is used to assess the underlying “quality” of a particular stock. A higher-quality stock possesses traits associated with upside potential and reduced downside risk. Backtesting of the Quality Grade shows that stocks with higher grades, on average, outperformed stocks with lower grades over the period of 1998 through 2019.

Stocks receive better grades (higher scores) for having higher scores for the quality subcomponents and worse grades (lower scores) for lower scores for the subcomponents.

Ashland Inc. has a Quality Score of 73, which is Strong. Hawkins, Inc. has a Quality Score of 76, which is Strong.

The Quality Grade Winner: It’s a Tie!

Looking at the Quality Grade breakdown above, both Ashland Inc., Hawkins and Inc. have a grade of B. For investors who focus solely on a company’s overall quality, you will need to conduct further research into both companies to see if they are a good fit for your portfolio. As a good rule of thumb, you should always analyze multiple factors based on a wide range of metrics before choosing a company to invest in.

Other Ashland Inc., Hawkins and Inc. Grades

In addition to Growth, Quality and Value, A+ Investor also provides grades for Momentum and Estimate Revisions.

Momentum grades help uncover stocks experiencing anomalously high rates of return; research finds that stocks with high relative levels of momentum tend to outperform, whereas those with low levels of momentum tend to continue underperforming.

Earnings estimate revisions scores take into account the magnitude of a company’s earnings surprise in its last two reported fiscal quarters. Often, surprises beget further surprises‐or at least continued sales growth (the exact opposite is generally true, too).

These 2 key factors, when combined with the above, provide a holistic view into a particular stock. Further, by joining A+ Investor you can see whether Ashland Inc., Hawkins and Inc. pass any of our 60+ stock screens that have outperformed the market since their creation.

So, Which Is the Better Investment, Ashland Inc., Hawkins or Inc. Stock?

Overall, Ashland Inc. stock has a Value Score of 70, Growth Score of 9 and Quality Score of 73.

Hawkins, Inc. stock has a Value Score of 22, Growth Score of 87 and Quality Score of 76.

Comparing Ashland Inc., Hawkins and Inc.’s grades, scores and metrics can act as a solid basis to determine whether they may be a good investment or not. You’ll also want to look at your portfolio’s asset allocation as well as your risk tolerance and financial goals to see if either of these stocks would make a good fit for you. AAII can help you figure out which investments align with your individual needs and preferences.

Investors are encouraged to do their own due diligence and research. In this way, individuals can effectively become managers of their own assets‐without having to rely on others for financial independence. You can count on AAII for timeless articles on financial planning and stock-picking, unbiased research and actionable analysis.

A+ Investor adds to our qualitative teaching with a powerful data suite to help you whittle down investment choices to find stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or mutual funds that meet your needs.

AAII Disclaimer

We make no representations or warranties that any investor will, or is likely to, achieve profits similar to those shown, because past, hypothetical or simulated performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Before making an investment decision, you should consider your circumstances and whether the information on our content is applicable to your situation. This information was prepared in good faith, and we accept no liability for any errors or omissions. The full disclaimer can be read here.