TransUnion (NYSE:TRU) & Verisk Analytics (NASDAQ:VRSK) Critical Survey

TransUnion (NYSE:TRU) and Verisk Analytics (NASDAQ:VRSK) are both large-cap business services companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, earnings, profitability, risk, analyst recommendations, valuation and dividends.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares TransUnion and Verisk Analytics”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
TransUnion	$4.18 billion	4.09	$284.30 million	$2.00	43.88
Verisk Analytics	$2.88 billion	13.13	$958.20 million	$6.49	41.73

Verisk Analytics has lower revenue, but higher earnings than TransUnion. Verisk Analytics is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than TransUnion, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for TransUnion and Verisk Analytics, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
TransUnion	1	4	10	0	2.60
Verisk Analytics	1	5	4	0	2.30

TransUnion currently has a consensus price target of $112.4615, indicating a potential upside of 28.14%. Verisk Analytics has a consensus price target of $305.60, indicating a potential upside of 12.83%. Given TransUnion’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe TransUnion is more favorable than Verisk Analytics.

Risk and Volatility

TransUnion has a beta of 1.65, suggesting that its stock price is 65% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Verisk Analytics has a beta of 0.83, suggesting that its stock price is 17% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

90.0% of Verisk Analytics shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.2% of TransUnion shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.5% of Verisk Analytics shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Dividends

TransUnion pays an annual dividend of $0.46 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.5%. Verisk Analytics pays an annual dividend of $1.80 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.7%. TransUnion pays out 23.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Verisk Analytics pays out 27.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years. TransUnion has raised its dividend for 1 consecutive years and Verisk Analytics has raised its dividend for 6 consecutive years. Verisk Analytics is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Profitability

This table compares TransUnion and Verisk Analytics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
TransUnion	8.99%	16.08%	6.47%
Verisk Analytics	30.67%	460.89%	20.80%

Summary

Verisk Analytics beats TransUnion on 10 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About TransUnion

TransUnion operates as a global consumer credit reporting agency that provides risk and information solutions. The company operates through U.S. Markets, International, and Consumer Interactive segments. The U.S. Markets segment provides consumer reports, actionable insights, and analytic services to businesses, which uses its services to acquire new customers; assess consumer ability to pay for services; identify cross-selling opportunities; measure and manage debt portfolio risk; collect debt; verify consumer identities; and mitigate fraud risk. This segment serves various industry vertical markets, including financial services, technology, commerce and communications, insurance, media, services and collections, tenant and employment, and public sectors. The International segment offers credit reports, analytics, technology solutions, and other value-added risk management services; consumer services, which help consumers to manage their personal finances; consumer credit reporting, insurance and auto information solutions, and commercial credit information services. It serves customers in financial services, retail credit, insurance, automotive, collections, public sector, and communications industries through direct and indirect channels. The company was formerly known as TransUnion Holding Company, Inc. and changed its name to TransUnion in March 2015. TransUnion was founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

About Verisk Analytics

Verisk Analytics, Inc. provides data analytics and technology solutions to the insurance markets in the United States and internationally. It offers policy language, prospective loss costs, policy writing and rating rules, and various underwriting solutions for risk selection and segmentation, pricing, and workflow optimization; property- and auto- specific rating and underwriting information solutions that allows clients to understand, quantify, underwrite, mitigate, and avoid potential loss for risks; catastrophe modeling solutions, which enables companies to identify, quantify, and plan for the financial consequences of catastrophes for use by insurers, reinsurers, intermediaries, financial institutions, and governments. The company also provides life insurance solutions for transforming current workflows in life insurance underwriting, claim insights, policy administration, unclaimed property/equity, compliance and fraud detection, and actuarial and portfolio modeling; Marketing Solutions, such as compliant, real-time decisioning, profitability, and risk assessment for inbound consumer interactions; and international underwriting and claims solutions. In addition, it offers claims insurance solutions, which provides analytics in fraud detection, compliance reporting, subrogation liability assessment, litigation, and repair cost estimation and valuation solutions; and casualty solutions, such as compliance, casualty claims decision support, and workflow automation solutions. Further, the company supplies software to the specialty insurance market. The company was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.