Critical Survey: Caldwell Partners International (OTCMKTS:CWLPF) & Verisk Analytics (NASDAQ:VRSK)

Caldwell Partners International (OTCMKTS:CWLPF) and Verisk Analytics (NASDAQ:VRSK) are both industrials companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, analyst recommendations, dividends, valuation, risk, profitability and institutional ownership.

Dividends

Caldwell Partners International pays an annual dividend of $0.07 per share and has a dividend yield of 9.7%. Verisk Analytics pays an annual dividend of $2.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.1%. Caldwell Partners International pays out 80.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Verisk Analytics pays out 30.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Verisk Analytics has raised its dividend for 6 consecutive years.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

8.7% of Caldwell Partners International shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 90.0% of Verisk Analytics shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.5% of Verisk Analytics shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for Caldwell Partners International and Verisk Analytics, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Caldwell Partners International	0	0	0	0	0.00
Verisk Analytics	1	7	6	1	2.47

Verisk Analytics has a consensus price target of $236.27, suggesting a potential upside of 26.53%. Given Verisk Analytics’ stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Verisk Analytics is more favorable than Caldwell Partners International.

Profitability

This table compares Caldwell Partners International and Verisk Analytics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Caldwell Partners International	N/A	N/A	N/A
Verisk Analytics	28.24%	-239.55%	18.56%

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Caldwell Partners International and Verisk Analytics”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Caldwell Partners International	N/A	N/A	N/A	$0.09	8.37
Verisk Analytics	$3.07 billion	7.91	$908.30 million	$6.51	28.68

Verisk Analytics has higher revenue and earnings than Caldwell Partners International. Caldwell Partners International is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Verisk Analytics, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Verisk Analytics beats Caldwell Partners International on 13 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Caldwell Partners International

The Caldwell Partners International Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides candidate research and sourcing services in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other European countries. The company offers retained executive and board search solutions; professional search; on-demand talent acquisition augmentation solutions; and talent strategy and assessment tools. The company offers its services under the Caldwell and IQTalent brand names. It serves real estate, consumer and commercial banking, academic, non-profit, social enterprise, culture, retail, financial services, industrial, insurance, life science, healthcare, private equity and venture capital, professional services, and technology sectors. The Caldwell Partners International Inc. was founded in 1970 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

About Verisk Analytics

Verisk Analytics, Inc. provides data analytics and technology solutions to the insurance markets in the United States and internationally. It offers policy language, prospective loss costs, policy writing and rating rules, and various underwriting solutions for risk selection and segmentation, pricing, and workflow optimization; property- and auto- specific rating and underwriting information solutions that allows clients to understand, quantify, underwrite, mitigate, and avoid potential loss for risks; catastrophe modeling solutions, which enables companies to identify, quantify, and plan for the financial consequences of catastrophes for use by insurers, reinsurers, intermediaries, financial institutions, and governments. The company also provides life insurance solutions for transforming current workflows in life insurance underwriting, claim insights, policy administration, unclaimed property/equity, compliance and fraud detection, and actuarial and portfolio modeling; Marketing Solutions, such as compliant, real-time decisioning, profitability, and risk assessment for inbound consumer interactions; and international underwriting and claims solutions. In addition, it offers claims insurance solutions, which provides analytics in fraud detection, compliance reporting, subrogation liability assessment, litigation, and repair cost estimation and valuation solutions; and casualty solutions, such as compliance, casualty claims decision support, and workflow automation solutions. Further, the company supplies software to the specialty insurance market. The company was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.