Financial Comparison: Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE) versus Seiko Epson (OTCMKTS:SEKEY)

Seiko Epson (OTCMKTS:SEKEY) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE:HPE) are both technology companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, valuation, institutional ownership, earnings, dividends, profitability and analyst recommendations.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

80.8% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.4% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Dividends

Seiko Epson pays an annual dividend of $0.14 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.3%. Hewlett Packard Enterprise pays an annual dividend of $0.57 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.0%. Seiko Epson pays out 53.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Hewlett Packard Enterprise pays out 29.7% 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. Hewlett Packard Enterprise has raised its dividend for 2 consecutive years.

Profitability

This table compares Seiko Epson and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Seiko Epson	1.71%	2.97%	1.66%
Hewlett Packard Enterprise	6.60%	15.50%	5.00%

Volatility and Risk

Seiko Epson has a beta of 0.92, indicating that its stock price is 8% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has a beta of 1.39, indicating that its stock price is 39% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Seiko Epson and Hewlett Packard Enterprise”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Seiko Epson	$9.39 billion	0.84	$113.84 million	$0.26	40.63
Hewlett Packard Enterprise	$34.30 billion	2.16	$57.00 million	$1.92	29.06

Seiko Epson has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Seiko Epson, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for Seiko Epson and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Seiko Epson	0	1	0	0	2.00
Hewlett Packard Enterprise	0	8	10	2	2.70

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has a consensus target price of $65.44, suggesting a potential upside of 17.29%. Given Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Hewlett Packard Enterprise is more favorable than Seiko Epson.

Summary

Hewlett Packard Enterprise beats Seiko Epson on 15 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Seiko Epson

Seiko Epson Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, develops, manufactures, sells, and provides services for products in the printing solutions, visual communications, manufacturing-related and wearables, and other businesses. It operates through three segments: Printing Solutions, Visual Communications, and Manufacturing-related and Wearables segments. The Printing Solutions segment offers home and office inkjet printers, serial impact dot matrix printers, page printers, color image scanners, dry process office papermaking systems, commercial and industrial inkjet printers, inkjet printheads, printers for use in POS systems, label printers, printer consumables, and others. The Visual Communications segment provides 3LCD projectors for business, education, the home, and event; smart glasses; and others. The Manufacturing-related and Wearables segment offers wristwatches, watch movements, and others; factory automation products, industrial robots, compact injection molders, and other production systems; and crystal units, crystal oscillators, quartz sensors, and others for consumer, automotive, and industrial equipment applications. This segment also provides CMOS LSIs and other chips primarily for consumer electronics and automotive applications; and metal powders for use as raw materials in the production of electronic components, etc., as well as value-added surface finishing in a range of industrial fields. The company also sells PCs, etc. It has operations in Japan, the Philippines, the United States, Indonesia, China, and internationally. Seiko Epson Corporation was incorporated in 1942 and is headquartered in Suwa, Japan.

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company provides solutions that allow customers to capture, analyze, and act upon data seamlessly in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and Japan. It operates in six segments: Compute, HPC & AI, Storage, Intelligent Edge, Financial Services, and Corporate Investments and Other. The company offers general purpose servers for multi-workload computing and workload-optimized servers; HPE ProLiant rack and tower servers; HPE Synergy; HPE Alletra, HPE GreenLake, Zerto, HPE InfoSight, and HPE CloudPhysics storage products; HPE Cray EX, HPE Cray XD, and converged edge systems; and HPE Superdome Flex, HPE Nonstop, and HPE Integrity products. It also provides HPE Aruba products that includes hardware products, such as Wi-Fi access points, switches, and gateways; HPE Aruba Networking software and services comprising cloud-based management, network management and access control, analytics and assurance, software-defined wide-area networking, network security, analytics and assurance, and location services software; and professional and support services, as well as as-a-service and consumption models. In addition, the company offers leasing, financing, IT consumption, and utility programs and asset management services for customers to facilitate technology deployment models and the acquisition of various IT solutions, including hardware, software, and services from Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others; consultative-led services; HPE Ezmeral Container Platform; HPE Ezmeral Software Container Platform and HPE Ezmeral Software Data Fabric; OpsRamp; and Hewlett Packard Labs. It serves commercial and large enterprise groups, such as business and public sector enterprises; and through various partners comprising resellers, distribution partners, original equipment manufacturers, independent software vendors, systems integrators, and advisory firms. The company was founded in 1939 and is headquartered in Spring, Texas.