Financial Contrast: Mastercard (NYSE:MA) versus Expensify (NASDAQ:EXFY)

Expensify (NASDAQ:EXFY) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA) are both business services companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, analyst recommendations, dividends, earnings, institutional ownership, risk and profitability.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings for Expensify and Mastercard, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Expensify	1	1	1	0	2.00
Mastercard	0	2	22	5	3.10

Expensify currently has a consensus price target of $3.50, suggesting a potential upside of 148.23%. Mastercard has a consensus price target of $662.08, suggesting a potential upside of 22.65%. Given Expensify’s higher possible upside, equities research analysts clearly believe Expensify is more favorable than Mastercard.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Expensify and Mastercard”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Expensify	$139.24 million	0.82	-$10.06 million	($0.17)	-8.29
Mastercard	$28.17 billion	17.21	$12.87 billion	$15.64	34.52

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

Profitability

This table compares Expensify and Mastercard’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Expensify	-10.83%	-11.75%	-8.46%
Mastercard	45.28%	202.03%	29.11%

Volatility and Risk

Expensify has a beta of 1.69, meaning that its share price is 69% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Mastercard has a beta of 0.86, meaning that its share price is 14% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

68.4% of Expensify shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 97.3% of Mastercard shares are held by institutional investors. 12.3% of Expensify shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.1% of Mastercard shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Mastercard beats Expensify on 12 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Expensify

Expensify, Inc. provides a cloud-based expense management software platform to individuals and corporations, small and midsized businesses, and enterprises in the United States and internationally. The company’s platform enables users to manage corporate cards, pay bills, generate invoices, collect payments, and book travel. It also offers track and submit plans for individuals. The company was founded in 2008 and is based in Portland, Oregon.

About Mastercard

Mastercard Incorporated, a technology company, provides transaction processing and other payment-related products and services in the United States and internationally. The company offers integrated products and value-added services for account holders, merchants, financial institutions, digital partners, businesses, governments, and other organizations, such as programs that enable issuers to provide consumers with credits to defer payments; payment products and solutions that allow its customers to access funds in deposit and other accounts; prepaid programs services; and commercial credit, debit, and prepaid payment products and solutions. It also provides solutions that enable businesses or governments to make payments to businesses, including Virtual Card Number, which is generated dynamically from a physical card and leverages the credit limit of the funding account; a platform to optimize supplier payment enablement campaigns for financial institutions; and treasury intelligence platform that offers corporations with recommendations to enhance working capital performance and accelerate spend on cards. In addition, the company offers Mastercard Send, which partners with digital messaging and payment platforms to enable consumers to send money directly within applications to other consumers; and Mastercard Cross-Border Services enables a range of payment flows through a distribution network with a single point of access to send and receive money globally through various channels, including bank accounts, mobile wallets, cards, and cash payouts. Further, it provides cyber and intelligence solutions; insights and analytics, consulting, marketing, loyalty, processing, and payment gateway solutions for e-commerce merchants; and open banking and digital identity services. The company offers payment solutions and services under the MasterCard, Maestro, and Cirrus name. Mastercard Incorporated was founded in 1966 and is headquartered in Purchase, New York.