Bright Horizons Family Solutions (NYSE:BFAM) versus Afya (NASDAQ:AFYA) Head to Head Comparison

Afya (NASDAQ:AFYA) and Bright Horizons Family Solutions (NYSE:BFAM) are both consumer discretionary companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, valuation, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, dividends and risk.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

88.0% of Afya shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.8% of Afya shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 1.4% of Bright Horizons Family Solutions shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Afya and Bright Horizons Family Solutions”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Afya	$662.01 million	2.07	$134.77 million	$1.64	8.90
Bright Horizons Family Solutions	$2.93 billion	1.24	$193.12 million	$3.16	23.72

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

Risk & Volatility

Afya has a beta of 0.34, suggesting that its share price is 66% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Bright Horizons Family Solutions has a beta of 1.14, suggesting that its share price is 14% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Afya and Bright Horizons Family Solutions’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Afya	20.55%	17.58%	9.09%
Bright Horizons Family Solutions	5.78%	20.09%	6.35%

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for Afya and Bright Horizons Family Solutions, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Afya	1	5	0	0	1.83
Bright Horizons Family Solutions	2	3	4	0	2.22

Afya presently has a consensus price target of $18.00, suggesting a potential upside of 23.37%. Bright Horizons Family Solutions has a consensus price target of $95.88, suggesting a potential upside of 27.94%. Given Bright Horizons Family Solutions’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Bright Horizons Family Solutions is more favorable than Afya.

Summary

Bright Horizons Family Solutions beats Afya on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

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.

About Bright Horizons Family Solutions

Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc. provides early education and childcare, back-up care, educational advisory, and other workplace solutions services for employers and families in the United States, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia, and India. The company operates in three segments: Full Service Center-Based Child Care, Back-Up Care, and Educational Advisory and Other Services. The Full Service Center-Based Child Care segment offers traditional center-based child care and early education, preschool, and elementary education services. The Back-Up Care segment provides center-based back-up child care, in-home child and adult/elder dependent care, school-age camps, virtual tutoring, and self-sourced reimbursed care services through child care centers, school-age campuses, and in-home caregivers, as well as the back-up care network. The Educational Advisory and Other Services segment offers tuition assistance and student loan repayment program administration, workforce education, and related educational consulting services, as well as college admissions and college financial advisory services. The company was formerly known as Bright Horizons Solutions Corp. and changed its name to Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc. in July 2012. Bright Horizons Family Solutions Inc. was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts.