Financial Analysis: LendingTree (NASDAQ:TREE) vs. Atlantic International (NASDAQ:CIRC)

Atlantic International (NASDAQ:CIRC) and LendingTree (NASDAQ:TREE) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, institutional ownership, risk, earnings, analyst recommendations, dividends and profitability.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

68.3% of LendingTree shares are held by institutional investors. 7.6% of Atlantic International shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 4.0% of LendingTree shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Volatility & Risk

Atlantic International has a beta of 0.81, indicating that its share price is 19% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, LendingTree has a beta of 2.04, indicating that its share price is 104% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for Atlantic International and LendingTree, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Atlantic International	1	1	0	1	2.33
LendingTree	0	2	5	0	2.71

LendingTree has a consensus price target of $61.33, indicating a potential upside of 111.79%. Given LendingTree’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe LendingTree is more favorable than Atlantic International.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Atlantic International and LendingTree”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Atlantic International	$799.87 million	0.08	-$59.43 million	($2.11)	-0.34
LendingTree	$1.12 billion	0.36	$151.31 million	$12.90	2.24

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

Profitability

This table compares Atlantic International and LendingTree’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Atlantic International	-19.39%	N/A	-28.58%
LendingTree	14.33%	14.57%	4.49%

Summary

LendingTree beats Atlantic International on 13 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Atlantic International

Atlantic International Corp., through its subsidiaries, operates as a staffing company servicing the commercial, professional, finance, direct placement, and managed service provider verticals. The company specializes in permanent, temporary, and temporary-to-permanent placement services in various areas, including accounting and finance, administrative and clerical, hospitality, information technology, legal, light industrial, and medical fields. It also provides productivity consulting and workforce management solutions. Atlantic International Corp. was founded in 2018 and is based in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

About LendingTree

LendingTree, Inc., through its subsidiary, operates online consumer platform in the United States. It operates through three segments: Home, Consumer, and Insurance. The Home segment offers purchase mortgage, refinance mortgage, and home equity loans and lines of credit; and real estate brokerage services. The Consumer segment provides credit cards; personal, small business, student, and auto loans; deposit accounts; and other credit products, such as debt settlement services. The Insurance segment includes information, tools, and access to insurance quote products, including home, automobile, and health and Medicare through which consumers are matched with insurance lead aggregators to obtain insurance offers and policies. In addition, the company offers QuoteWizard, a marketplace for insurance comparison; ValuePenguin, a personal finance website that offers consumers objective analysis on various financial topics from insurance to credit cards; and Stash, a consumer investing and banking platform that offers a suite of personal investment accounts, traditional and Roth IRAs, custodial investment accounts, and banking services, including checking accounts and debit cards with a Stock-Back rewards program. The company was formerly known as Tree.com, Inc. and changed its name to LendingTree, Inc. in January 2015. LendingTree, Inc. was incorporated in 1996 and is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.