Reviewing CompoSecure (NASDAQ:CMPO) and Shift4 Payments (NYSE:FOUR)

CompoSecure (NASDAQ:CMPO) and Shift4 Payments (NYSE:FOUR) are both business services companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their risk, earnings, profitability, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, valuation and dividends.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for CompoSecure and Shift4 Payments, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
CompoSecure	0	0	6	0	3.00
Shift4 Payments	1	11	10	0	2.41

CompoSecure presently has a consensus target price of $25.50, suggesting a potential upside of 77.82%. Shift4 Payments has a consensus target price of $70.19, suggesting a potential upside of 81.51%. Given Shift4 Payments’ higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Shift4 Payments is more favorable than CompoSecure.

Risk and Volatility

CompoSecure has a beta of 0.98, meaning that its stock price is 2% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Shift4 Payments has a beta of 1.43, meaning that its stock price is 43% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

37.6% of CompoSecure shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 98.9% of Shift4 Payments shares are owned by institutional investors. 52.1% of CompoSecure shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 1.5% of Shift4 Payments shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares CompoSecure and Shift4 Payments’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
CompoSecure	-24.53%	-65.50%	26.83%
Shift4 Payments	2.63%	33.55%	5.01%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares CompoSecure and Shift4 Payments”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
CompoSecure	$160.68 million	11.28	-$53.72 million	($2.16)	-6.64
Shift4 Payments	$4.18 billion	0.73	$119.00 million	$0.84	46.04

Shift4 Payments has higher revenue and earnings than CompoSecure. CompoSecure is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Shift4 Payments, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Shift4 Payments beats CompoSecure on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About CompoSecure

CompoSecure, Inc. manufactures and designs metal, composite, and proprietary financial transaction cards in the United States and internationally. Its primary metal form factors include embedded, metal veneer lite, metal veneer, and full metal products. The company also offers Arculus Cold Storage Wallet, a three-factor authentication solution, which supports specific digital assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, non-fungible tokens and others. In addition, it offers Payments + Arculus Secure Authenticate, white-labeled cold storage wallet, Payments + Arculus Cold Storage, and Payments + Arculus Authentication + Arculus Cold Storage. The company serves financial institutions, plastic card manufacturers, system integrators, and security specialists. CompoSecure, Inc. was founded in 1910 and is based in Somerset, New Jersey.

About Shift4 Payments

Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE FOUR) provides integrated payment processing and technology solutions in the United States. Its payments platform provides omni-channel card acceptance and processing solutions, including end-to-end payment processing for various payment types; merchant acquiring; proprietary omni-channel gateway; complementary software integrations; integrated and mobile point-of-sale (POS) solutions; security and risk management solutions; and reporting and analytical tools, as well as tokenization, risk management/underwriting, payment device and chargeback management, fraud prevention, and gift card solutions. The company also offers suite of technology solutions, such as Lighthouse, a cloud-based business intelligence tool that includes customer engagement, social media management, online reputation management, scheduling, and product pricing, as well as reporting and analytics; integrated POS for merchants business; and Skytab, a mobile payment solution. In addition, it provides marketplace technology that enable seamless integrations into third-party applications, which includes online delivery services, payroll, timekeeping, and other human resource services. Further, the company offers merchant management, training and education, marketing management, and incentives tracking solutions. Additionally, it provides merchant underwriting, onboarding and activation, training, risk management, and support services; and software integrations and compliance management, and partner support and services. The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania.