Comparing Shift4 Payments (FOUR) & Its Competitors

Shift4 Payments (NYSE:FOUR) is one of 341 publicly-traded companies in the “Financial Services” industry, but how does it weigh in compared to its competitors? We will compare Shift4 Payments to similar companies based on the strength of its profitability, analyst recommendations, earnings, valuation, institutional ownership, dividends and risk.

Profitability

This table compares Shift4 Payments and its competitors’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Shift4 Payments	2.34%	25.42%	4.32%
Shift4 Payments Competitors	-409.12%	-40.47%	-6.29%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current recommendations and price targets for Shift4 Payments and its competitors, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Shift4 Payments	1	11	11	0	2.43
Shift4 Payments Competitors	1988	6946	11713	446	2.50

Shift4 Payments presently has a consensus target price of $53.86, suggesting a potential upside of 22.74%. As a group, “Financial Services” companies have a potential downside of 6.28%. Given Shift4 Payments’ higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Shift4 Payments is more favorable than its competitors.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

98.9% of Shift4 Payments shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 43.0% of shares of all “Financial Services” companies are owned by institutional investors. 1.5% of Shift4 Payments shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 21.9% of shares of all “Financial Services” companies are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk and Volatility

Shift4 Payments has a beta of 1.5, indicating that its stock price is 50% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Shift4 Payments’ competitors have a beta of 2.51, indicating that their average stock price is 151% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Shift4 Payments and its competitors top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Shift4 Payments	$4.18 billion	$119.00 million	73.14
Shift4 Payments Competitors	$6.43 billion	$1.09 billion	10.52

Shift4 Payments’ competitors have higher revenue and earnings than Shift4 Payments. Shift4 Payments is trading at a higher price-to-earnings ratio than its competitors, indicating that it is currently more expensive than other companies in its industry.

Summary

Shift4 Payments competitors beat Shift4 Payments on 7 of the 13 factors compared.

About Shift4 Payments

Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE FOUR) provides integrated payment processing and technology solutions in the United States. Its payments platform provides omni-channel card acceptance and processing solutions, including end-to-end payment processing for various payment types; merchant acquiring; proprietary omni-channel gateway; complementary software integrations; integrated and mobile point-of-sale (POS) solutions; security and risk management solutions; and reporting and analytical tools, as well as tokenization, risk management/underwriting, payment device and chargeback management, fraud prevention, and gift card solutions. The company also offers suite of technology solutions, such as Lighthouse, a cloud-based business intelligence tool that includes customer engagement, social media management, online reputation management, scheduling, and product pricing, as well as reporting and analytics; integrated POS for merchants business; and Skytab, a mobile payment solution. In addition, it provides marketplace technology that enable seamless integrations into third-party applications, which includes online delivery services, payroll, timekeeping, and other human resource services. Further, the company offers merchant management, training and education, marketing management, and incentives tracking solutions. Additionally, it provides merchant underwriting, onboarding and activation, training, risk management, and support services; and software integrations and compliance management, and partner support and services. The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania.