Contrasting IDT (IDT) & Its Rivals

IDT (NYSE:IDT) is one of 203 publicly-traded companies in the “Diversified Telecommunication Services” industry, but how does it contrast to its peers? We will compare IDT to related companies based on the strength of its institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, earnings, dividends, profitability, risk and valuation.

Dividends

IDT pays an annual dividend of $0.28 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.3%. IDT pays out 8.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. As a group, “Diversified Telecommunication Services” companies pay a dividend yield of 13.8% and pay out 33.1% of their earnings in the form of a dividend. IDT has raised its dividend for 1 consecutive years.

Profitability

This table compares IDT and its peers’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
IDT	6.67%	24.22%	12.69%
IDT Competitors	-11.87%	-217.43%	-3.33%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

59.3% of IDT shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 32.5% of shares of all “Diversified Telecommunication Services” companies are held by institutional investors. 25.4% of IDT shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 18.3% of shares of all “Diversified Telecommunication Services” companies are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings for IDT and its peers, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
IDT	0	1	2	0	2.67
IDT Competitors	1753	5349	7764	384	2.44

IDT currently has a consensus target price of $85.00, suggesting a potential upside of 3.89%. As a group, “Diversified Telecommunication Services” companies have a potential upside of 25.66%. Given IDT’s peers higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe IDT has less favorable growth aspects than its peers.

Volatility and Risk

IDT has a beta of 0.54, meaning that its stock price is 46% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, IDT’s peers have a beta of -4.90, meaning that their average stock price is 590% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares IDT and its peers top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
IDT	$1.30 billion	$86.63 million	23.58
IDT Competitors	$103.95 billion	$893.66 million	-168.68

IDT’s peers have higher revenue and earnings than IDT. IDT is trading at a higher price-to-earnings ratio than its peers, indicating that it is currently more expensive than other companies in its industry.

Summary

IDT beats its peers on 10 of the 15 factors compared.

IDT Company Profile

IDT Corporation provides communications and payment services in the United States, the United Kingdom, and internationally. It operates through Fintech, National Retail Solutions, net2phone, and Traditional Communications segments. The company operates point of sale, a terminal-based platform which provides independent retailers store management software, electronic payment processing, and other ancillary merchant services; and provides marketers with digital out-of-home advertising and transaction data. It also offers BOSS Money for international money remittance, and related value and payment transfer services; and Leaf, a digital wallet services which operates money transfer businesses, as well as net2phone, a unified cloud communication services, which includes voice, texting, and chat services to enable smarter business conversations. In addition, the company provides IDT Digital Payments enables businesses, entrepreneurs, and developers to offer prepaid digital offerings including mobile airtime top-up, mobile data bundles, digital gift cards, and prepaid utility payments through its Zendit platform; and BOSS Revolution Calling, which provides international long-distance voice services primarily to immigrant communities in the United States and Canada. Further, it offers IDT Global, a wholesale provider of international voice and SMS termination, and outsourced traffic management solutions to telecoms; and IDT Express, a unique self-serve portal that offers SMBs the power to purchase DIDs, manage IPs, select termination quality, make payments, and other services. The company also provides Awards2Go, a B2B incentive, loyalty, and customer appreciation gift card solution; and IO Security which provides automation to remediation. IDT Corporation was incorporated in 1978 and is headquartered in Newark, New Jersey.