Reviewing Carriage Services (NYSE:CSV) & Afya (NASDAQ:AFYA)

Carriage Services (NYSE:CSV) and Afya (NASDAQ:AFYA) are both small-cap consumer discretionary companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, risk, valuation, profitability, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership and dividends.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Carriage Services and Afya”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Carriage Services	$417.44 million	1.36	$51.51 million	$2.79	12.85
Afya	$662.01 million	1.49	$134.77 million	$1.64	6.40

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and target prices for Carriage Services and Afya, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Carriage Services	1	1	2	0	2.25
Afya	1	3	4	0	2.38

Carriage Services presently has a consensus target price of $50.00, suggesting a potential upside of 39.42%. Afya has a consensus target price of $15.70, suggesting a potential upside of 49.52%. Given Afya’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Afya is more favorable than Carriage Services.

Dividends

Carriage Services pays an annual dividend of $0.45 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.3%. Afya pays an annual dividend of $0.66 per share and has a dividend yield of 6.3%. Carriage Services pays out 16.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Afya pays out 40.2% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years.

Risk and Volatility

Carriage Services has a beta of 0.72, suggesting that its stock price is 28% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Afya has a beta of 0.43, suggesting that its stock price is 57% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

66.5% of Carriage Services shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 88.0% of Afya shares are held by institutional investors. 2.7% of Carriage Services shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.8% of Afya shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Carriage Services and Afya’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Carriage Services	10.69%	19.23%	3.71%
Afya	20.55%	17.58%	9.09%

Summary

Afya beats Carriage Services on 10 of the 16 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Carriage Services

Carriage Services, Inc. provides funeral and cemetery services, and merchandise in the United States. It operates in two segments, Funeral Home Operations and Cemetery Operations. The Funeral Home Operations segment provides consultation services; funeral home facilities for visitation and memorial services; transportation services; removal and preparation of remains; sale of caskets and urns; cremation services; and related funeral merchandise. The Cemetery Operations segment sells interment rights for grave sites, lawn crypts, mausoleum spaces, and niches; related cemetery merchandise, including memorial markers, outer burial containers, and monuments; and interments, inurnments, and installation of cemetery merchandise services. Carriage Services, Inc. was founded in 1991 and is based in Houston, Texas.

About Afya

Afya Limited, through its subsidiaries, operates as a medical education group in Brazil. The company operates through three segments: Undergrad, Continuing Education, and Digital Services. It offers educational products and services, including medical schools, medical residency preparatory courses, graduate courses, and other programs to lifelong medical learners enrolled across its distribution network, as well as to third-party medical schools. The company also provides digital health services, such as subscription-based mobile app and website portal that focuses on assisting health professionals and students with clinical decision-making through tools, such as medical calculators, charts, and updated content, as well as prescriptions, clinical scores, medical procedures and laboratory exams, and others. It offers health sciences courses, which comprise medicine, dentistry, nursing, radiology, psychology, pharmacy, physical education, physiotherapy, nutrition, and biomedicine; and degree programs and courses in other subjects and disciplines, including undergraduate and post graduate courses in business administration, accounting, law, civil engineering, industrial engineering, and pedagogy. In addition, the company provides medical postgraduate specialization programs; printed and digital content; and an online medical education platform and practical medical training services. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Nova Lima, Brazil.