Shift4 Payments (FOUR) vs. Its Competitors Head to Head Comparison

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

Earnings & Valuation

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

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current recommendations for Shift4 Payments and its peers, as reported by MarketBeat.

	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 price target 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 possible upside, research analysts plainly believe Shift4 Payments is more favorable than its peers.

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’ peers have a beta of 2.51, indicating that their average stock price is 151% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Shift4 Payments and its peers’ 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%

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

Summary

Shift4 Payments peers 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.