Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ:AKAM) & Shift4 Payments (NYSE:FOUR) Financial Review

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

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current recommendations and price targets for Shift4 Payments and Akamai Technologies, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Shift4 Payments	0	6	15	0	2.71
Akamai Technologies	1	5	14	2	2.77

Shift4 Payments currently has a consensus target price of $106.40, suggesting a potential downside of 2.51%. Akamai Technologies has a consensus target price of $116.85, suggesting a potential upside of 24.89%. Given Akamai Technologies’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Akamai Technologies is more favorable than Shift4 Payments.

Risk & Volatility

Shift4 Payments has a beta of 1.7, suggesting that its share price is 70% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Akamai Technologies has a beta of 0.65, suggesting that its share price is 35% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings & Valuation

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

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Shift4 Payments	$3.15 billion	3.12	$86.20 million	$1.84	59.32
Akamai Technologies	$3.97 billion	3.54	$547.63 million	$3.38	27.68

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

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Shift4 Payments	4.04%	23.86%	5.87%
Akamai Technologies	13.27%	14.63%	6.85%

Insider & Institutional Ownership

98.9% of Shift4 Payments shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 94.3% of Akamai Technologies shares are owned by institutional investors. 30.6% of Shift4 Payments shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 1.8% of Akamai Technologies shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Akamai Technologies beats Shift4 Payments on 9 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

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.

About Akamai Technologies

Akamai Technologies, Inc. provides cloud computing, security, and content delivery services in the United States and internationally. The company offers cloud solutions to keep infrastructure, websites, applications, application programming interfaces, and users safe from various cyberattacks and online threats while enhancing performance. It also provides web and mobile performance solutions to enable dynamic websites and applications; media delivery solutions, including video streaming and video player services, game and software delivery, broadcast operations, authoritative domain name system, resolution, and data and analytics; and cloud computing services, such as compute, storage, networking, database, and container management services to build, deploy, and secure applications and workloads. In addition, the company offers content delivery solutions; and an array of service and support to assist customers with integrating, configuring, optimizing, and managing its offerings. It sells its solutions through various channel partners. Akamai Technologies, Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.