Head to Head Contrast: Issuer Direct (NYSE:ISDR) and FTI Consulting (NYSE:FCN)

FTI Consulting (NYSE:FCN) and Issuer Direct (NYSE:ISDR) are both business services companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, earnings, risk, dividends and valuation.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

99.4% of FTI Consulting shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 50.0% of Issuer Direct shares are held by institutional investors. 2.5% of FTI Consulting shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 26.9% of Issuer Direct shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
FTI Consulting	8.37%	14.79%	9.23%
Issuer Direct	-4.54%	5.03%	2.80%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for FTI Consulting and Issuer Direct, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
FTI Consulting	0	0	2	0	3.00
Issuer Direct	0	0	0	0	0.00

FTI Consulting currently has a consensus target price of $275.00, indicating a potential upside of 39.52%. Given FTI Consulting’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe FTI Consulting is more favorable than Issuer Direct.

Volatility and Risk

FTI Consulting has a beta of 0.12, suggesting that its share price is 88% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Issuer Direct has a beta of 0.77, suggesting that its share price is 23% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares FTI Consulting and Issuer Direct”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
FTI Consulting	$3.49 billion	2.03	$274.89 million	$8.70	22.66
Issuer Direct	$33.38 million	1.11	$770,000.00	($0.35)	-27.57

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

Summary

FTI Consulting beats Issuer Direct on 12 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About FTI Consulting

FTI Consulting, Inc. provides business advisory services to manage change, mitigate risk, and resolve disputes worldwide. The company operates through Corporate Finance & Restructuring, Forensic and Litigation Consulting, Economic Consulting, Technology, and Strategic Communications segments. The Corporate Finance & Restructuring segment provides business transformation and strategy, transactions, and turnaround and restructuring services. The Forensic and Litigation Consulting segment offers construction and environmental solutions, data and analytics, disputes, health solutions, and risk and investigation services. The Economic Consulting segment provides antitrust and competition economics, financial economics, and international arbitration services. The Technology segment offers corporate legal department consulting; e-discovery and expertise; and information governance, privacy, and security services. The Strategic Communications segment provides corporate reputation, financial communications, and public affairs services. It serves aerospace and defense, airlines and aviation, blockchain and digital assets, chemicals, construction and environmental solutions, energy, financial services, food and agriculture, healthcare and life sciences, hospitality, gaming and leisure, automotive and industrial, insurance, mining, private equity, power and renewable, public sector and government contracts, real estate, retail and consumer products, telecom, media and technology, and transportation and logistics sectors. FTI Consulting, Inc. was incorporated in 1982 and is headquartered in Washington, the District of Columbia.

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.