Head to Head Comparison: GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group (NASDAQ:GLIBA) and Iridium Communications (NASDAQ:IRDM)

GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group (NASDAQ:GLIBA) and Iridium Communications (NASDAQ:IRDM) are both communication services companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, analyst recommendations, risk, institutional ownership, dividends, valuation and earnings.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group and Iridium Communications, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group	0	1	0	0	2.00
Iridium Communications	1	4	3	0	2.25

Iridium Communications has a consensus price target of $38.67, indicating a potential downside of 22.56%. Given Iridium Communications’ stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Iridium Communications is more favorable than GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group.

Profitability

This table compares GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group and Iridium Communications’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group	-32.53%	11.82%	5.94%
Iridium Communications	10.55%	22.57%	4.11%

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group and Iridium Communications”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group	$1.05 billion	0.67	-$309.00 million	($10.71)	-2.30
Iridium Communications	$884.17 million	5.98	$114.37 million	$0.88	56.74

Iridium Communications has lower revenue, but higher earnings than GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group. GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Iridium Communications, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

84.4% of Iridium Communications shares are held by institutional investors. 7.9% of GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 2.7% of Iridium Communications shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Iridium Communications beats GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group on 10 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About GCI Liberty, Inc. – Series A GCI Group

GCI Liberty, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides various communication services in the United States. The company offers data, wireless, video, voice, and managed services to residential customers, businesses, governmental entities, and educational and medical institutions primarily in Alaska under the GCI brand. It also operates a digital invitation platform that provides custom display advertising, native advertising content, custom video, and brand partnership services. The company is based in Englewood, Colorado.

About Iridium Communications

Iridium Communications Inc. provides mobile voice and data communications services and products to businesses, the United States and international governments, non-governmental organizations, and consumers worldwide. The company offers postpaid mobile voice and data satellite communications; prepaid mobile voice satellite communications; push-to-talk; broadband data; and Internet of Things (IoT) services. It also provides hosted payload and other data services, such as satellite time and location services; and inbound connections from the public switched telephone network, short message, subscriber identity module, activation, customer reactivation, and other peripheral services. In addition, the company offers voice and data solutions comprising personnel tracking devices; asset tracking devices for equipment, vehicles, and aircrafts; beyond-line-of-sight aircraft communications applications; maritime communications applications; specialized communications solutions for high-value individuals; mobile communications and data devices for the military and other government agencies, such as secure satellite handsets, as well as netted voice, messaging, and paging services; and maintenance services for the United States government's dedicated gateway. Further, it provides satellite handsets, voice and data modems, broadband data devices, and IoT data devices; various accessories for its devices that include batteries, holsters, earbud headphones, portable auxiliary antennas, antenna adaptors, USB data cables, charging units, and others; and engineering and support services. Iridium Communications Inc. sells its products and services to commercial end users through a wholesale distribution network that include service providers, and value-added resellers and manufacturers. The company was formerly known as Iridium Holdings LLC and changed its name to Iridium Communications Inc. in September 2009. Iridium Communications Inc. is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.