Critical Survey: Expensify (NASDAQ:EXFY) and FirstCash (NASDAQ:FCFS)

Expensify (NASDAQ:EXFY) and FirstCash (NASDAQ:FCFS) are both business services companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, dividends, institutional ownership, profitability, risk, valuation and earnings.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Expensify and FirstCash, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Expensify	1	1	1	0	2.00
FirstCash	0	1	3	2	3.17

Expensify presently has a consensus price target of $3.50, indicating a potential upside of 212.50%. FirstCash has a consensus price target of $198.00, indicating a potential downside of 9.97%. Given Expensify’s higher probable upside, equities analysts plainly believe Expensify is more favorable than FirstCash.

Risk and Volatility

Expensify has a beta of 1.75, meaning that its stock price is 75% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, FirstCash has a beta of 0.52, meaning that its stock price is 48% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

68.4% of Expensify shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 80.3% of FirstCash shares are owned by institutional investors. 11.7% of Expensify shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.9% of FirstCash shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Expensify and FirstCash’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Expensify	-15.05%	-16.00%	-11.42%
FirstCash	9.15%	18.68%	8.18%

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Expensify and FirstCash”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Expensify	$142.10 million	0.70	-$21.39 million	($0.24)	-4.67
FirstCash	$3.88 billion	2.49	$330.38 million	$7.98	27.56

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

Summary

FirstCash beats Expensify on 12 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Expensify

Expensify, Inc. provides a cloud-based expense management software platform to individuals and corporations, small and midsized businesses, and enterprises in the United States and internationally. The company’s platform enables users to manage corporate cards, pay bills, generate invoices, collect payments, and book travel. It also offers track and submit plans for individuals. The company was founded in 2008 and is based in Portland, Oregon.

About FirstCash

FirstCash Holdings, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, operates retail pawn stores in the United States, Mexico, and rest of Latin America. The company operates in three segments: U.S. Pawn, Latin America Pawn, and Retail POS Payment Solutions segments. Its pawn stores lend money on the collateral of pledged personal property, including jewelry, electronics, tools, appliances, sporting goods, and musical instruments; and retails merchandise acquired through collateral forfeitures on forfeited pawn loans and over-the-counter purchases of merchandise directly from customers. The company also provides retail POS payment solutions, which focuses on LTO products and facilitating other retail financing payment options across the network of traditional and e-commerce merchant partners. It serves cash and credit-constrained consumers. The company was formerly known as FirstCash, Inc and changed its name to FirstCash Holdings, Inc. in December 2021. FirstCash Holdings, Inc was incorporated in 1988 and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas.