Critical Comparison: WEX (NYSE:WEX) & Viad (NYSE:VVI)

Viad (NYSE:VVI) and WEX (NYSE:WEX) are both business services companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, valuation, analyst recommendations, earnings, profitability, risk and dividends.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

89.9% of Viad shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 97.5% of WEX shares are held by institutional investors. 4.1% of Viad shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 1.1% of WEX shares are held by company 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.

Profitability

This table compares Viad and WEX’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Viad	2.68%	47.55%	5.49%
WEX	12.45%	31.35%	3.92%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for Viad and WEX, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Viad	0	0	2	0	3.00
WEX	0	6	6	1	2.62

Viad presently has a consensus price target of $48.00, indicating a potential upside of 13.07%. WEX has a consensus price target of $228.64, indicating a potential upside of 36.17%. Given WEX’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe WEX is more favorable than Viad.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Viad and WEX”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Viad	$1.40 billion	0.64	$16.02 million	$0.50	84.90
WEX	$2.66 billion	2.52	$266.60 million	$7.88	21.31

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

Volatility & Risk

Viad has a beta of 2.07, meaning that its stock price is 107% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, WEX has a beta of 1.57, meaning that its stock price is 57% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

WEX beats Viad on 9 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Viad

Viad Corp provides hospitality, leisure activities, experiential marketing, and live events in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. It operates in three segments: Pursuit, Spiro, and GES Exhibitions. The Pursuit segment offers recreational attractions, hotels and lodges, food and beverage, retail, sightseeing, and ground transportation services. This segment consists of Banff Jasper Collection, the Alaska Collection, the Glacier Park Collection, FlyOver, and Sky Lagoon. The Spiro segment operates as an experiential marketing agency that partners with brands around the world to manage and elevate their global experiential marketing activities. The GES Exhibition segment engages as an exhibition services company that partners with exhibition and conference organizers as a full-service provider of strategic and logistics solutions to manage the complexity of their shows. It serves event organizers and corporate brand marketers; and tour operators, tour wholesalers, destination management companies, and retail travel agencies. Viad Corp was founded in 1926 and is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona.

About WEX

WEX Inc. operates a commerce platform in the United States and internationally. The Mobility segment offers fleet vehicle payment solutions, transaction processing, and information management services; and provides account activation and account retention services; authorization and billing inquiries, and account maintenance services; account management; credit and collections services; merchant services; analytics solutions; and ancillary services and offerings. This segment markets its products directly and indirectly to businesses and government agencies with fleets of commercial vehicles; and indirectly through co-branded and private label relationships. The Corporate Payments segment provides payment solutions, including embedded payments; and accounts payable automation and spend management solutions. This segment also markets its products directly and indirectly to customers in travel, fintech, insurance, consumer bill pay, and media verticals. The Benefits Solutions segment offers software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for consumer directed healthcare benefits and full-service benefit enrollment solutions. In addition, its SaaS platform includes embedded payment solutions and plan administration services for consumer-directed health benefits; COBRA accounts; and benefit enrollment and administration services. Further, it offers custodial and depository services for health savings accounts; and markets its products through third-party administrators, financial institutions, payroll providers, and health plans. The company was formerly known as Wright Express Corporation and changed its name to WEX Inc. in October 2012. WEX Inc. was founded in 1983 and is based in Portland, Maine.