Contrasting Advantage Solutions (NASDAQ:ADV) & Growlife (OTCMKTS:PHOT)

Growlife (OTCMKTS:PHOT) and Advantage Solutions (NASDAQ:ADV) are both consumer discretionary companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, valuation, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, earnings, risk and dividends.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

49.8% of Advantage Solutions shares are owned by institutional investors. 2.8% of Growlife shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 7.9% of Advantage Solutions shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Growlife and Advantage Solutions, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Growlife	0	0	0	0	0.00
Advantage Solutions	1	1	1	0	2.00

Advantage Solutions has a consensus price target of $2.00, indicating a potential upside of 233.39%. Given Advantage Solutions’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Advantage Solutions is more favorable than Growlife.

Profitability

This table compares Growlife and Advantage Solutions’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Growlife	N/A	N/A	N/A
Advantage Solutions	-6.97%	-34.40%	-8.04%

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Growlife and Advantage Solutions”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Growlife	N/A	N/A	N/A	($0.16)	N/A
Advantage Solutions	$3.57 billion	0.05	-$326.96 million	($0.75)	-0.80

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

Summary

Advantage Solutions beats Growlife on 6 of the 10 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Growlife

GrowLife, Inc. focuses on the functional mushroom business. It processes, stores, markets, distributes, and sells fresh and dried mushroom products. The company was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Kirkland, Washington.

About Advantage Solutions

Advantage Solutions Inc. provides business solutions to consumer goods manufacturers and retailers in North America and internationally. It operates in two segments, Sales and Marketing. The Sales segment offers brand-centric services, such as headquarter relationship management; analytics, insights, and intelligence; and brand-centric merchandising services. This segment also provides retailer-centric services comprising retailer-centric merchandising and in-store media services. The Marketing segment offers brand-centric services, including shopper and consumer marketing, and brand experiential services; retailer-centric services, such as retail experiential and private label services; and digital marketing, and digital media and advertising services. The company was formerly known as Karman Holding Corp. and changed its name to Advantage Solutions Inc. in March 2016. The company was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in Irvine, California.