Bright Horizons Family Solutions (NYSE:BFAM) and Bowman Consulting Group (NASDAQ:BWMN) Head-To-Head Survey

Bright Horizons Family Solutions (NYSE:BFAM) and Bowman Consulting Group (NASDAQ:BWMN) are both business services companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, risk, institutional ownership, dividends, profitability, valuation and analyst recommendations.

Volatility & Risk

Bright Horizons Family Solutions has a beta of 1.36, suggesting that its share price is 36% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Bowman Consulting Group has a beta of 1.31, suggesting that its share price is 31% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent recommendations for Bright Horizons Family Solutions and Bowman Consulting Group, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Bright Horizons Family Solutions	1	3	4	1	2.56
Bowman Consulting Group	0	2	3	0	2.60

Bright Horizons Family Solutions presently has a consensus target price of $128.71, suggesting a potential upside of 33.54%. Bowman Consulting Group has a consensus target price of $38.17, suggesting a potential upside of 12.59%. Given Bright Horizons Family Solutions’ higher probable upside, equities research analysts clearly believe Bright Horizons Family Solutions is more favorable than Bowman Consulting Group.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

63.2% of Bowman Consulting Group shares are owned by institutional investors. 1.2% of Bright Horizons Family Solutions shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 17.4% of Bowman Consulting Group shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Bright Horizons Family Solutions and Bowman Consulting Group’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Bright Horizons Family Solutions	6.34%	15.12%	5.27%
Bowman Consulting Group	3.33%	6.30%	3.03%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Bright Horizons Family Solutions and Bowman Consulting Group”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Bright Horizons Family Solutions	$2.87 billion	1.90	$140.19 million	$3.48	27.70
Bowman Consulting Group	$474.28 million	1.24	$3.03 million	$0.93	36.45

Bright Horizons Family Solutions has higher revenue and earnings than Bowman Consulting Group. Bright Horizons Family Solutions is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Bowman Consulting Group, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Bright Horizons Family Solutions beats Bowman Consulting Group on 11 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Bright Horizons Family Solutions

Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc. provides early education and childcare, back-up care, educational advisory, and other workplace solutions services for employers and families in the United States, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia, and India. The company operates in three segments: Full Service Center-Based Child Care, Back-Up Care, and Educational Advisory and Other Services. The Full Service Center-Based Child Care segment offers traditional center-based child care and early education, preschool, and elementary education services. The Back-Up Care segment provides center-based back-up child care, in-home child and adult/elder dependent care, school-age camps, virtual tutoring, and self-sourced reimbursed care services through child care centers, school-age campuses, and in-home caregivers, as well as the back-up care network. The Educational Advisory and Other Services segment offers tuition assistance and student loan repayment program administration, workforce education, and related educational consulting services, as well as college admissions and college financial advisory services. The company was formerly known as Bright Horizons Solutions Corp. and changed its name to Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc. in July 2012. Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc. was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts.

About Bowman Consulting Group

Bowman Consulting Group Ltd. provides a range of real estate, energy, infrastructure, and environmental management solutions in the United States. It offers civil and site engineering services, such as conceptual land planning, environmental consulting and permitting, planning/zoning and entitlements, roadway and highway designs, erosion and sediment designs, stormwater management designs, construction administration, traffic studies, floodplain studies, and utility relocation designs; and commissioning and energy efficiency services comprise construction observation, direct systems functional performance testing, system development readiness checklist, post occupancy review, review of construction documents, deferred/seasonal functional testing, final commissioning report, and commissioning review of submittals. The company also provides construction management services, including constructability review, value engineering, budgeting and cost estimating, interagency and utility coordination, onsite observation and report evaluation, public communication and outreach, and resident engineer services, as well as bid solicitation, documentation, and preparation services; and environmental consulting services consisting of wetlands and waters of the U.S. delineations, natural resources inventories, wildlife and vegetation surveys, threatened and endangered species surveys, endangered species conservation and management, wetland creation and enhancement design, NEPA documentation, section 404/401 permitting and compliance, NPDES permitting, and phase I environmental site assessment. In addition, it offers landscape architecture, land procurement and right-of-way acquisition, structural engineering, surveying and geospatial engineering, and transportation and water resources engineering services, as well as mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering services. The company was incorporated in 1995 and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia.