Visa (NYSE:V) vs. Euronet Worldwide (NASDAQ:EEFT) Head to Head Review

Euronet Worldwide (NASDAQ:EEFT) and Visa (NYSE:V) are both finance companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, earnings, valuation, profitability, risk and dividends.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

91.6% of Euronet Worldwide shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 82.2% of Visa shares are held by institutional investors. 12.2% of Euronet Worldwide shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.1% of Visa shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility and Risk

Euronet Worldwide has a beta of 0.82, indicating that its share price is 18% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Visa has a beta of 0.74, indicating that its share price is 26% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for Euronet Worldwide and Visa, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Euronet Worldwide	1	3	3	0	2.29
Visa	0	0	24	7	3.23

Euronet Worldwide currently has a consensus price target of $94.00, suggesting a potential upside of 32.00%. Visa has a consensus price target of $414.54, suggesting a potential upside of 8.11%. Given Euronet Worldwide’s higher possible upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Euronet Worldwide is more favorable than Visa.

Profitability

This table compares Euronet Worldwide and Visa’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Euronet Worldwide	6.63%	28.60%	5.67%
Visa	50.78%	67.68%	25.45%

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Euronet Worldwide and Visa”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Euronet Worldwide	$4.24 billion	0.64	$309.50 million	$6.37	11.18
Visa	$40.00 billion	17.11	$20.06 billion	$11.76	32.61

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

Summary

Visa beats Euronet Worldwide on 11 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Euronet Worldwide

Euronet Worldwide, Inc. provides payment and transaction processing and distribution solutions to financial institutions, retailers, service providers, and individual consumers worldwide. It operates through three segments: Electronic Fund Transfer Processing, epay, and Money Transfer. The Electronic Fund Transfer Processing segment provides electronic payment solutions, including automated teller machine (ATM) cash withdrawal and deposit services, ATM network participation, outsourced ATM and point-of-sale (POS) management solutions, credit and debit and prepaid card outsourcing, card issuing, and merchant acquiring services. It also offers ATM and POS currency conversion, ATM surcharge, advertising, customer relationship management, mobile top-up, bill payment, fraud management, foreign remittance and cardless payout, banknote recycling, and tax-refund services; and integrated electronic financial transaction software solutions for electronic payment and transaction delivery systems. The epay segment distributes and processes prepaid mobile airtime and other electronic payment products; and provides payment processing services for various prepaid products, cards, and services, as well as vouchers and physical gift fulfillment, and gift card distribution and processing services. This segment operates a network of approximately 821,000 POS terminals. The Money Transfer segment offers consumer-to-consumer and account-to-account money transfer, customers bill payment, check cashing, foreign currency exchange, mobile top-up, and cash management and foreign currency risk management services, as well as payment alternatives, such as money orders and prepaid debit cards. The company was formerly known as Euronet Services, Inc. and changed its name to Euronet Worldwide, Inc. in August 2001. Euronet Worldwide, Inc. was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Leawood, Kansas.

About Visa

Visa Inc. operates as a payment technology company in the United States and internationally. The company operates VisaNet, a transaction processing network that enables authorization, clearing, and settlement of payment transactions. It also offers credit, debit, and prepaid card products; tap to pay, tokenization, and click to pay services; Visa Direct, a solution that facilitates the delivery of funds to eligible cards, deposit accounts, and digital wallets; Visa B2B Connect, a multilateral business-to-business cross-border payments network; Visa Cross-Border Solution, a cross-border consumer payments solution; and Visa DPS that provides a range of value-added services, including fraud mitigation, dispute management, data analytics, campaign management, a suite of digital solutions, and contact center services. The company also provides acceptance solutions, which include Cybersource that provides modular and value-added services for connecting merchants to payment processing; risk and identity solutions, such as Visa Advanced Authorization, Visa Secure, Visa Risk and Decision Manager, Visa Consumer Authentication Service, and payment-decisioning solutions for fraud prevention; and Visa Consulting and Analytics, a payment consulting advisory services. It provides its services under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink, V PAY, and PLUS brand names. The company serves merchants, financial institutions, and government entities. Visa Inc. was founded in 1958 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.