Financial Analysis: Franklin Covey (NYSE:FC) and Verisk Analytics (NASDAQ:VRSK)

Verisk Analytics (NASDAQ:VRSK) and Franklin Covey (NYSE:FC) are both industrials companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, risk, earnings, analyst recommendations, dividends, institutional ownership and profitability.

Risk and Volatility

Verisk Analytics has a beta of 0.69, meaning that its share price is 31% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Franklin Covey has a beta of 0.77, meaning that its share price is 23% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

90.0% of Verisk Analytics shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 69.9% of Franklin Covey shares are held by institutional investors. 0.5% of Verisk Analytics shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 15.2% of Franklin Covey shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Verisk Analytics and Franklin Covey’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Verisk Analytics	28.24%	-239.55%	18.56%
Franklin Covey	0.83%	17.37%	4.04%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Verisk Analytics and Franklin Covey”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Verisk Analytics	$3.07 billion	8.09	$908.30 million	$6.51	29.33
Franklin Covey	$267.07 million	0.77	$3.07 million	$0.17	107.64

Verisk Analytics has higher revenue and earnings than Franklin Covey. Verisk Analytics is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Franklin Covey, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and target prices for Verisk Analytics and Franklin Covey, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Verisk Analytics	0	8	6	1	2.53
Franklin Covey	1	1	2	0	2.25

Verisk Analytics presently has a consensus price target of $224.79, suggesting a potential upside of 17.72%. Franklin Covey has a consensus price target of $27.50, suggesting a potential upside of 50.28%. Given Franklin Covey’s higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Franklin Covey is more favorable than Verisk Analytics.

Summary

Verisk Analytics beats Franklin Covey on 10 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Verisk Analytics

Verisk Analytics, Inc. provides data analytics and technology solutions to the insurance markets in the United States and internationally. It offers policy language, prospective loss costs, policy writing and rating rules, and various underwriting solutions for risk selection and segmentation, pricing, and workflow optimization; property- and auto- specific rating and underwriting information solutions that allows clients to understand, quantify, underwrite, mitigate, and avoid potential loss for risks; catastrophe modeling solutions, which enables companies to identify, quantify, and plan for the financial consequences of catastrophes for use by insurers, reinsurers, intermediaries, financial institutions, and governments. The company also provides life insurance solutions for transforming current workflows in life insurance underwriting, claim insights, policy administration, unclaimed property/equity, compliance and fraud detection, and actuarial and portfolio modeling; Marketing Solutions, such as compliant, real-time decisioning, profitability, and risk assessment for inbound consumer interactions; and international underwriting and claims solutions. In addition, it offers claims insurance solutions, which provides analytics in fraud detection, compliance reporting, subrogation liability assessment, litigation, and repair cost estimation and valuation solutions; and casualty solutions, such as compliance, casualty claims decision support, and workflow automation solutions. Further, the company supplies software to the specialty insurance market. The company was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.

About Franklin Covey

Franklin Covey Co. provides training and consulting services in the areas of execution, sales performance, productivity, customer loyalty, and educational improvement for organizations and individuals worldwide. The company operates through Direct Offices, International Licensees, and Education Practice segments. It also provides a suite of individual-effectiveness and leadership-development training and products. In addition, the company operates Strive platform, a learning deployment platform; Impact platform that helps automate implementation of learning initiatives; All Access Pass, a subscription platform that enables improved deployment of content, services, technology, and metrics to deliver behavioral impact at scale; and Leader in Me, which provides access to digital versions of student leadership guides, leadership lessons, illustrated leadership stories, and other resources. Franklin Covey Co. was incorporated in 1983 and is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.