Issuer Direct (NYSE:ISDR) and CGI (NYSE:GIB) Critical Comparison

Issuer Direct (NYSE:ISDR) and CGI (NYSE:GIB) are both industrial products companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, dividends, risk, valuation, analyst recommendations and institutional ownership.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

50.0% of Issuer Direct shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 66.7% of CGI shares are held by institutional investors. 26.1% of Issuer Direct shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 9.9% of CGI shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Issuer Direct and CGI, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Issuer Direct	0	0	0	0	N/A
CGI	0	1	1	0	2.50

CGI has a consensus target price of $165.00, suggesting a potential upside of 65.31%. Given CGI’s higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe CGI is more favorable than Issuer Direct.

Profitability

This table compares Issuer Direct and CGI’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Issuer Direct	2.43%	9.01%	4.88%
CGI	11.38%	20.43%	11.00%

Risk & Volatility

Issuer Direct has a beta of 0.78, meaning that its share price is 22% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, CGI has a beta of 0.95, meaning that its share price is 5% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Issuer Direct and CGI’s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Issuer Direct	$33.38 million	0.90	$770,000.00	$0.20	39.20
CGI	$10.60 billion	2.17	$1.21 billion	$5.19	19.23

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

Summary

CGI beats Issuer Direct on 11 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Issuer Direct

Issuer Direct Corporation operates as a communications and compliance company, provides solutions for both public relations and investor relations professionals in the United States and internationally. The company provides press release distribution, media databases, media monitoring, and newsrooms through media advantage platform; ACCESSWIRE, a news dissemination and media outreach service; and Webcaster Platform, a cloud-based webcast, webinar, and virtual meeting platform that delivers live and on-demand streaming of events to audiences of various sizes, as well as allows customers to create, produce, and deliver events. It also offers professional conference and events software, a mobile app that offers organizers, issuers, and investors to register, request, and approve one-on-one meetings, as well as manage schedules, perform event promotion and sponsorship, print attendee badges, and manage lodging; and investor relations content network, a series of data feeds, which include news feeds, stock feeds, fundamentals, regulatory filings, corporate governance, and other components. In addition, the company provides whistleblower hotline, a system that delivers secure notifications and basic incident workflow management processes that align with a company's corporate governance whistleblower policy; stock transfer module, which offers access to real-time information about their shareholders, stock ledgers, and reports, as well as issues new shares; and proxy module, a real-time voting platform for customers and their shareholders of record. It serves public and private companies, mutual funds, law firms, brokerage firms, investment banks, individuals, and other institutions. The company was incorporated in 1988 and is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina.

About CGI

CGI Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides information technology (IT) and business process services. Its services include the business and strategic IT consulting, systems integration, and software solutions. The company also provides application development, modernization and maintenance, holistic enterprise digitization, automation, hybrid and cloud management, and business process services; intellectual property-based solutions; business consulting; managed IT services; and IT infrastructure services. It serves clients operating in government, banking and capital market, health, utility, communication and media, oil and gas, space, manufacturing, insurance, life sciences, retail and consumer service, and transportation and logistics sectors. The company operates in Canada, France, Spain, Portugal, the United States, Germany, Sweden, Norway, the United Kingdom, Australia, Finland, Poland, Baltics, the Netherlands, Denmark, Czech Republic, India, the Philippines, Asia Pacific, and internationally. Western and Southern Europe; Australia; Scandinavia; Finland, Poland, and Baltics; the United States; the United Kingdom; and the Asia Pacific. The company was formerly known as CGI Group Inc. and changed its name to CGI Inc. in January 2019. CGI Inc. was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada.